The Questor Saga: The Dark Lady and the Black Crow
by Pyeknu
Summary: Sequel to "Avalonians and Questors." As a long-missing starship returns to the Federation, the Borg attack Earth, forcing the USS Enterprise to go into the past to ensure First Contact occurs between Terrans and Vulcans. And help revive a long-lost hero.
1. The Black Crow Returns to the Nest

The planet Vulcan, the R'sev Mountains, Earth-year 2084 . . .

"Why are we here, Solkar?"

The captain of the _Sha'ath_ blinked before he turned to gaze upon T'Pau. Like she and their other companion Soval, Solkar had been part of the crew of an earlier survey ship that had made first contact with the Terrans in the wake of their successfully testing an indigenous warp drive system twenty-one Earth-years before. "There are very few people who know the truth of those who permanently reside within the Khal, T'Pau," the former captain of the _T'Plana-Hath_ stated as he beckoned them off the tram that had taken the explorers to this remote mountain range a thousand kilometres from ShiKahr overlooking the western edge of the Forge. "Given what we discovered near the tri-star system closest to Sol, they will be able to assist us in better understanding who that person is and how to assist her in restoring herself to proper health."

"How would they be able to understand that . . . person?" Soval asked, unable to hide the hesitation he felt before saying the word "person."

"You will comprehend soon enough, Soval. Come."

With that, they proceeded away from the tram station and into the small village located at the foot of the towering escarpment which held the Khal Fortress at its southern summit. Gazing upon the ancient basalt defensive works of a place which rivalled the Hall of Pelasht near ShiKahr in terms of sheer size, Solkar's companions could not fail but to appreciate the historical significance of this location. The Khal at R'sev was Vulcan's version of the Tigris-Euphrates valley on Earth; it was at this location - at a time when the second planet of 40 Eridani A was far more lush and tropic than it was now a hundred thousand years later - where the ancestors of their race began to evolve into a coherent civilisation with vast improvements in cultural and social structures from the primitive tribes which had once communicated with each other only via telepathy. These days, the Khal Fortress and the ruins of the ancient villages close to the fortress walls were governed as a planetary historical park, visited upon regularly by school-age children in class outings when their teachers felt it was the appropriate time for them to learn of how their species had truly begun to evolve and develop as a civilised race. All three of the crew of the _Sha'ath_ had been on such trips in their youth, though Solkar seemed to not be seized by the urge to recall such journeys that his companions now experienced walking through the village.

That was something Soval was quick to notice. "You have been here several times before in the wake of the mandatory field trip to the Khal in your youth."

"Yes," the captain replied. "My aunt T'Keri resides here now as part of the preservation team. She was forced to relocate here in the wake of her accident at the Science Academy." Both Soval and T'Pau remembered hearing about that incident; Solkar's aunt had nearby been electrocuted to death when an experimental neuron regenerative machine malfunctioned. It had been a most unsatisfactory end to a promising research career. "She is the one who will introduce us to Elder T'Naga, the supervisor of the preservation team here at the Khal," Solkar added.

"Elder T'Naga is still the supervisor here?" T'Pau asked.

"She has been the supervisor here for the past six hundred years, T'Pau."

Silence.

"That is not possible," Soval nearly blurted out; the shock of THAT revelation had almost shattered all the control he possessed over his emotions. "No normal Vulcan can . . . "

"You are correct, Soval," Solkar stated as he gazed on his friend. "But you will soon learn that Elder T'Naga, as well as the others who are permanent residents at the Khal - including my aunt - are not _normal_ Vulcans." As the younger man took a moment to absorb that information, the captain of the _Sha'ath_ seemed to smile. "It will be explained. Come. We must not keep them waiting more than necessary, Soval."

And with that, he proceeded towards the incline elevator that would take them up the side of the escarpment to the gates of the Khal. Soval and T'Pau both watched him go, and then they moved to follow, trying hard to fight down the many questions now racing through their minds as they moved to keep up with their commander's determined strides . . .

* * *

"Peace and long life, my aunt."

"Live long and prosper, my nephew. To both of you as well, Master Soval, Lady T'Pau. Come and rest."

Solkar nodded as he moved to take a seat on the long couch that was laid out in the middle of the simple space where T'Keri currently resided. While Soval did the same thing, T'Pau remained standing, gazing in wide-eyed disbelief - even for a Vulcan! - at their host. Dressed in simple robes that fit well for the hot season on this part of their world, T'Keri was an elegantly beautiful woman in the classic mode, with glossy black hair done in a high beehive, deep brown eyes piercing an angular, hawkish-face that - were Vulcans apt to think like their galactic neighbours on Andor and Earth - could easily intimidate a lematya with just a _look_. In the eyes of Terrans, T'Keri would appear to be a woman in her early twenties; through a Vulcan perspective, she would appear to be a woman who had yet to pass her eightieth season of life. THAT, both Soval and T'Pau knew, was utterly impossible; T'Keri, they both understood, was the OLDER sister of Solkar's own father S'Tor . . . and that fellow was well past his _five hundredth _season of life!

Before either of them could muster the energy to ask what was happening, T'Keri gazed upon them, one of her elegant eyebrows rising in curiosity. "My nephew informed me in his communiqué of four days past that you located a Terran-form Questor in a drifting cargo vessel near the Terrans' home solar system," she stated.

Both Soval and T'Pau gazed curiously at her. "'Questor,' Lady T'Keri?" the former then asked. "I have never heard of such a race."

"It is what I was forced to become when the incident at the Academy nearly ended my life," T'Keri explained. "What you see now before you is the body I was born in 524 seasons ago, Master Soval. However, while it is now a body that - to the macro-molecular level - is no different than what I possessed before the accident, it is when one scans past the _molecular_ level that matters profoundly differ. For my body currently is not based on DNA constructed of carbon-form proteins . . . but of _silicon_-form proteins."

Silence.

More silence.

Still more silence.

And then . . .

"How is this possible?" T'Pau asked as she sank into a chair, barely able to hide the tremor in her voice as the implications of what their host had just revealed sank in.

And those implications were potentially REVOLUTIONARY.

"In the end, T'Pau . . . we do not know."

Solkar's co-workers both looked surprised. "Has this ever been researched by the Science Academy?" Soval asked. "How is it possible that carbon atoms can be replaced by silicon atoms in a living being . . . and the person undergoing this process continues to _live_?"

"That, Master Soval, is a secret that was lost to our earliest predecessors over two hundred thousand seasons ago," T'Keri explained. "That incident is what we address as 'the Silence.' It was during that event that we lost all genetic memory of our origins as an indigenous species, much less lost all understanding - if it was ever there - of the purpose of our being as it is simply not possible for a living being born of a carbon-based form of life to be transformed as I was naturally." She paused before adding, "Fortunately, the Silence did not hamper our abilities to bring new sisters - as we address each other as - into the Fold; that is the term we employ to address our community as a whole. As clearly someone on Earth did for the unfortunate woman you found on that ship." She then gazed on Solkar. "My nephew, what has the High Command learned of the identity of this person?"

"They believe her to be a native of the Terran nation called 'the Dominion of Canada,' my aunt. It is one of the few nations that endured Earth's third planet-wide conflict with as little damage to infrastructure - to say anything of loss of life - as possible," the captain of the _Sha'ath_ explained. "The person in question was a warrior in their ground military forces, an officer that commanded a specialised warfare operations unit known as the 'Canadian Special Operations Regiment.' It was that unit that, five Earth-years ago, effectively destroyed a very entropic organisation calling itself the 'Optimum Movement in the Pursuit of Perfection.' They are the group that are believed to have started the series of events by which the Terrans now address under the uniform title 'the Third World War.'" He paused before adding, "Her name - as we believe her to be - is Glorianna Theresa Jameston. Her friends are known to be allowed to address her by a preferred moniker, 'Roy.'"

"Is she awake?" T'Keri asked.

"She is, but - according to T'Eris, a healer who is aware of the existence of Questors; I requested her assistance as soon as the _Sha'ath_ landed at ShiKahr - all her memories have been deleted from her mind," Solkar explained. "She is not even capable of speech, though Healer T'Eris is moving to teach her our language."

Both Soval and T'Pau were quick to see the look of near-horror that crossed their host's face when she heard her nephew say that. After the older woman then took a moment to compose herself - where her guests all fell respectfully silent to give her the chance to regain a sense of proper decorum - she quietly asked, "Where is the Lady Roy?"

"She is in T'Eris' clinic at the Academy," Solkar stated.

"Have her brought here immediately. Go now."

The younger man bowed his head, and then moved to head out of the room for the nearest communications terminal. "Should we not inform the Terrans of this, my lady?" T'Pau then asked. "If indeed this person is Colonel Jameston - given what she was said to have done on Earth - the Terrans will be profoundly concerned for her welfare."

"But do the governments on Earth know of the existence of the Questors?" T'Keri countered. "We are not totally ignorant of events in that solar system even if we are isolated here at the Khal, Lady T'Pau. We here have been in contact with Questors born of other species that Vulcan has contacted ever since the _'Ahkh_ and the self-imposed exile of S'task and the _Rihannsu_ from this world at the time of the Reformation." As both Soval and T'Pau gazed wide-eyed at their host, she affirmed with a nod, "Yes, even if members of the High Command find it more convenient to keep relations with Andor closed, we ensure there is at least one open diplomatic link with that world through our sisters there. And we have no need to impose on our sisters on Tellar Prime to maintain such a link." She closed her eyes. "It is . . . most pleasing to me that you have helped us confirm that we have sisters on Earth as well. Though given the appearance of Questors in all species that we have encountered since the _'Ahkh_, the probability of Terran-form Questors was extraordinarily high."

"It clearly is most fortunate," Soval stated. While he certainly did not fully understand how these Questors could be of overall benefit to Vulcan as a whole, the fact that those such as their host were allowed to live in peace and in effective secrecy at the Khal spoke profoundly of how those in the High Command must currently regard them. "Would the High Command assist you in ascertaining if there are other Terran-form Questors on Earth at this time, Lady?"

"I believe so. But given the current level of disunity amongst the peoples of that world - though it is quite pleasing to note that Earth's colonies in her own solar system and in the system they designate as Alpha Centauri are now moving to render what aid they can to their mother planet - I believe it will be some time before we could launch such an investigation," T'Keri noted. "Let us wait for the time that the Terrans have moved to forge a true world government before contemplating such an action." She then looked over as Solkar came back into the room. "What news?"

"Healer T'Eris is bringing the colonel here now, my aunt," the young captain of the _Sha'ath_ stated as he deeply bowed to her.

"Sufficient." The Vulcan-form Questor then considered something before turning to ask, "What type of vessel did you find the Lady Roy in?"

"The Terrans designate it as a DY-400 class ship," Soval stated. "It is a vessel that is equipped with cryogenetic habitation capsules for long term sub-light voyages; it is not warp-equipped. The Terrans address such a vessel as a 'sleeper ship.'"

"Ah," the older woman breathed out, nodding. "Then the colonel's survival - once we help her recover from what has caused such a catastrophic loss of internal data within her mind - can easily be explained when the time finally comes to reveal her existence to those who benefitted the most from her actions on Earth."

"When could such a thing occur?" T'Pau wondered.

T'Keri closed her eyes. "That, Lady T'Pau . . . I cannot and I refuse to speculate on."

* * *

**The Questor Saga: **_**The Dark Lady and the Black Crow**_  
by Fred Herriot

Based on _Star Trek_, created by Gene Roddenberry

This is a sequel to _Avalonians and Questors_. It also incorporates material from the television series _Star Trek - Deep Space Nine_, created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller; and the movie _Star Trek - First Contact_, produced by Rick Berman, based on a story by Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore.

* * *

_**WRITER'S INTRODUCTION:**__ Here's the sequel to _Avalonians and Questors_ concerning the universe of the Federation in the wake of the encounter between U.S.S. _Enterprise_ and H.M.C.S. _Haida_ as depicted in that story. Set around the time of the movie _First Contact_ (save for the teaser), it will - as the previous story did - contain characters stemming from a whole host of sources beyond the television shows and movies. Atop that, there will be brief appearances by the crew of the U.S.S. _Haida_ as they were introduced in one of the epilogues to _Avalonians and Questors_, not to mention the cast of a very famous _Star Trek_ parody which appeared in Japan in the mid-1980s . . . as well as a ship concept I first came up with in my previous attempts at writing _Star Trek_ fanfic on the Star Trek Creative fan fiction Usenet group which can be accessed through Google Groups these days. Anyhow, as always, sit back and enjoy the story!_

* * *

_Somewhere in space . . ._

No! Oh, God, please . . . no . . .!

_The heat . . ._

_ The humidity . . ._

_ The lack of control . . ._

Not this! God, why must I go through **this** . . .?

_The voices . . ._

_ Millions upon millions of voices . . ._

_ Voices all speaking as one . . ._

_ "_I am Locutus . . . of Borg._"_

NO! I AM JEAN-LUC PICARD!

_"_Resistance is futile._"_

NO! DON'T MAKE ME DO THIS!

_"_Your life . . . as it has been . . . is over._"_

NO! NO! NO! NO MORE! NO MORE OF THIS! IT WILL STOP!

_"_From this time forward . . . you will service . . . us._"_

**IT . . . WILL . . . STOP!**

_"_**Lower your shields and surrender your ships . . . **_"_

**STOP!**

_"_**We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own . . . **_"_

**STOP! YOU WILL STOP! YOU WILL NOT WIN! YOU WILL NOT WIN!**

_"_**Your culture will adapt to service us . . . **_"_

**YOU - WILL - NOT - WIN!**

_"_**Resistance is futile . . . **_"_

_ "_**OH, SHUT UP!**_"_

_ That made Jean-Luc Picard's eyes fly open as he found himself staring at a scowling woman in a simple nightshirt standing some distance away from the cubicle - the very one where his whole life had been torn apart years before - was located deep within the Borg vessel that had wiped out forty starships at the Battle of Wolf 359. As his mind tried to focus on the young woman - as that part of him which was still fully him and not Locutus realised this was none other than Carol Kirk, the Terran-form Questor daughter of his famous predecessor as commander of the _Enterprise_ - the massive chanting of voices that marked the presence of the Collective fell silent as endless pairs of eyes and optical sensors of all types focused on her. Taking a deep breath, he tried to gasp out the young cadet's name . . ._

_ "_**You are Carol Miramanee Kirk . . . **_"_

_ An icy dread flooded Picard's soul on hearing those endless voices speak out as one._

_ "_**You are of Race Zero . . . **_"_

That_ made the captain of the _Enterprise_ blink in confusion._

'Race Zero?' Wait! What did I hear about that . . .?

_"_**You will not be allowed to halt our advance . . . **_"_

_ Carol, Picard was quick to realise, didn't look either frightened or intimidated by the threatening voices of the Collective now focusing on her._

_ "_**Even if your race cannot be assimilated, you will . . . **_"_

_ "I said . . . _**SHUT THE HELL UP!**_"_

_ Silence._

_ A tired sigh escaped the young cadet as she put her fists to her hips, and then Carol focused on the older man standing some distance away from her before a wry grin crossed her face. "With all due respect, sir . . . if this is your idea of a dream, you really need to arrange an appointment with Counsellor Troi as soon as you can."_

_ Picard blinked, and then he looked down to see that he was now in his normal sleeping clothes, a nightshirt over a pair of exercise pants. Blinking as he started to realise that somehow, his mind had come to touch that of Jim Kirk's daughter, he took a step out of the cubicle. Noting nothing was stopping him, he breathed out before a jolt of pain arced across his right cheek. "No . . .!" he gasped as he felt Borg cybernetics literally start to GROW out from under his skin. "NO . . .!"_

_ "_**We are the Borg . . . resistance is futile . . . **_"_

_ "__**The Borg are a disease . . . **__"_

_ Picard jolted to a stop before he looked around, his heart leaping into his throat on recognising that voice. "Jennifer . . . "_

_ "Who?" Carol called out._

_ "__**The Borg are an abomination against the natural order . . . **__"_

_ The captain's eyes teared. "Jennifer!" he called out. "Where are you?"_

_ "__**Look ahead of you, Jean-Luc**__."_

_ Picard's head snapped over as Carol turned around . . ._

_ . . . as space before the cube literally OPENED UP in a giant tear, allowing a familiar shape to soar out into normal space, heading right for the Borg._

_ "_**You are of the Fifth Unimatrix . . . **_"_

_ "__**We were saved by them, yes**__."_

_ "Captain, what the hell type of ship is that?" Carol hissed._

_ Picard blinked. "Stadacona-class, Miss Kirk . . . "_

_ "_**You must be re-assimilated into the Collective . . . **_**"**_

_** "The Collective will be forever deleted from existence . . . **__"_

_ "The _Cornwallis_ . . . " Picard said as he gazed upon the upper part of the primary hull of the approaching troop transport, seeing the name of the ship that he had taken his first shakedown cruise on back in 2328, said vessel's registry number _**NCC-41943**_ glittering with fresh paint in the reflected light of nearby stars._

_ "_**You will not be allowed to halt our advance . . . **_**"**_

_** "You've tried it already six years ago . . . and you lost.**__"_

_ As the current captain of the _Enterprise_ and the daughter of a former captain of the _Enterprise_ watched, the large starship with __a large, circular primary hull that could swallow the primary hulls of two Galaxy-class ships_, bracketed by mirror-shaped upper-and-lower secondary hulls, interconnection dorsal structures forward and a modular engineering hull aft, twin pairs of warp nacelles connected to both secondary hulls and with each other at that location finally came to a stop several kilometres from the cube.

_ "_**You will be re-assimilated into the Collective . . . **_**"**_

_** "We welcome you to try.**__"_

_Suddenly, the corona of a MASSIVE energy cannon that had taken the place of the upper secondary hull's navigational deflector dish began to billow, nearly obscuring all of the _Cornwallis_ from the view of anyone standing where Picard and Carol were._

_ "_**Resistance is futile.**_"_

_"__**You said it yourself**__."_

_ "_**JENNIFER, NO . . .!**_" Picard screamed out._

_ "__**Resistance is futile. For YOU.**__"_

_ That corona then exploded, vaporizing all around Picard and Carol . . ._

* * *

_. . . and then they found themselves standing on a starship bridge._

_ Carol was the first to recognise their surroundings. "The _Enterprise_-D?"_

_ Picard blinked, and then he shook his head. "No . . . "_

_ As the cadet watched, he walked over to the starboard side of the bridge structure to gaze on the dedication plaque that was posted on the bulkhead which stood beside the doorway leading into a briefing room. Gazing on what was there, he then smiled as his hand reached up to feel the Royal Canadian Navy ship's badge that was etched into the metal above the name of the starship they were now standing on._

**U.S.S. **_**CORNWALLIS**_  
Stadacona Class Starship, Starfleet Registry Number NCC-41943  
Launched Stardate 23721.4, Port Weller Spacedocks  
Saint Catharines, Ontario, Earth, United Federation of Planets_  
Learn to Serve_

_A smile crossed his face as he gazed around the bridge. "Hello, old friend . . . "_

_ "So what is this ship?" Carol asked._

_ Picard chuckled. "The ship I did my first cadet cruise on after graduating from the Academy, Carol," he said. "Stadacona-class heavy troop transport. With one of these ships, you could move an entire Starfleet Marine _brigade _with all their equipment from planet to planet at Warp 9.95 and do it with comfort." He sighed before taking a look around the empty structure. "While the others of the class were all put into holding reserve at Regula over twenty years ago when relations between ourselves and the Klingons firmed up in the wake of the Battle of Narendra III, _Cornwallis_ was modified to be the test ship for the Galaxy-class explorers. She disappeared seventeen years ago." Walking down towards the trio of central chairs in the middle of the bridge space, the wide arc of the ship's main tactical station behind them, he stopped before the captain's chair, and then moved to sit down in it. "No one knows what happened to her."_

_ "You cannot sit there, Jean-Luc."_

_ Carol spun around as Picard bolted up. "Jennifer!"_

_ Standing now by the doorway to the captain's ready room was a human woman looking to be about in her mid-thirties. Raven-haired and brown-eyed, she was dressed in an older-model red-and-black command department uniform, commander's pips on her right collar. Her hair was long and flowed in a wild halo around her head as she gazed on the captain of the _Enterprise _with eyes that both seemed all-aware . . . yet also seemed forever devoid of any sign of true life. Noting that, Carol was quick to realise why: Located right at the top of the commander's manubrium - barely noticeable to Picard but sticking out like a sore thumb to the Questor's enhanced eyesight - was a circular badge pushed right into the skin, glowing a bright red. The same type of badge that was on the skin of an ultra-sophisticated probe created by a living machine to examine the "carbon units" then believed to be "infesting" another starship named _Enterprise_ . . ._

_ "Captain! Stay still!" she barked out, shifting over to block his approaching that woman with an outstretched hand. "She's not who you think she is!"_

_ He jolted. "What do you mean?"_

_ "She has a right to be wary, Jean-Luc," the newcomer then said, making the captain turn to gaze at her. "My soul may be that of the woman you knew as Jennifer Carolyn Archer . . . but my body was replaced long ago by the same race that transformed a simple probe from Earth into a living entity that the cadet's father knows of quite well."_

_ Silence._

_ "V'Ger . . . " he whispered, his eyes widening in horror._

_ The woman nodded. "We'll be back, Jean-Luc. But you can never be the captain of this ship, not after all the things that have been done to her." A faint smile then crossed her face. "Go now, Jean-Luc. We'll be home very soon . . . "_

_ He blinked as he felt the images around him fade into blackness._

_ " . . . and you will be forever free of the Collective . . . "_

_ He tried to scream out as a chirping noise echoed in his ears . . ._

* * *

. . . and then he moaned as he found himself gazing at the deckhead of his own cabin aboard the starship _Enterprise_, the same chirping noise echoing all around him.

"A dream . . .?" he whispered before sitting up, and then he reached over to the work desk beside his bed to tap the control at the communications console. "Computer, accept incoming secure message and de-code," he ordered, recognising the chirps as the signal that a classified coded message was coming in. "Authorisation Picard-Four-Seven-Alpha-Tango."

The screen flicked on, revealing the image of Vice Admiral Jeremiah Hayes, who was one of the senior operational directors at Starfleet Headquarters back on Earth. "Did I catch you at a bad time, Jean-Luc?" the man with the greying hair asked.

A wry grin crossed the veteran captain's face. "I was asleep," he smoothly lied before taking a deep breath. "So what's wrong?"

"We just received a disturbing message from Deep Space Five," Hayes replied, a grim look crossing his face. "Long-range sensors have just picked up . . . "

Picard tensed, and then he closed his eyes. "The Borg."

Hayes nodded . . .

* * *

Meanwhile, below decks . . .

"Ooooooh . . . what a strange dream . . . "

A pair of hazel eyes fluttered open as Carol Kirk found herself gazing at the deckhead of her cabin in the upper primary hull of the ship. As she was still seen as a cadet fourth class - she was nearing the end of her first inter-semester cruise aboard the _Enterprise_ before she would return to San Francisco, pass the pre-year practical examinations for advancement to third class cadet, then proceed into her sophomore year of studies - she was quartered in one of the junior officers' multi-bed rooms on Deck 5. Fortunately for her, she had not been assigned any roommates, which was more than fine for her. While she wouldn't really mind a roommate to have someone to talk to whenever she was off-duty, being the daughter of the most famous starship captain in Federation history - to say ANYTHING of her actually being a Questor, whose existence was still supposed to be kept top secret to the general public, both in Starfleet and beyond - rather limited her choice of potential roommates to a very select few.

"Never did that before," she muttered to herself before swinging her own communications terminal around, tapping a control. "Computer, time."

"_Ship's time is 0612 hours_."

"Current stardate?"

"_Stardate 50893.4_."

Hearing that, Carol sighed. "Almost time . . . "

* * *

Captain's Personal Log, Stardate 50893.5,_  
The moment I have privately dreaded for six years has finally come.  
The Borg, our most lethal enemy to date, have come once again to invade and assimilate the Federation. This time - thanks to improvements made to the fleet thanks to hard work by many technicians and weapons-smiths - it is believed that we stand a very good chance at forcing them back, a better one than what we possessed at Wolf 359.  
But I am personally doubtful that even with all the hard work that's been sunk into improving our defences, the Borg will be easy to deal with.  
While the majority of my senior staff disagree with Starfleet's current orders concerning us - to deploy to our side of the Romulan Neutral Zone to ensure the Star Empire will not take advantage of our momentary distraction - they have no choice but to agree with the assessment Admiral Hayes gave towards my possible participation in the upcoming engagement. The memories of my being transformed into Locutus are still as sharp as ever in my mind. Command's unwillingness to allow an "unstable element" into the equations determining what would happen in the upcoming battle in Sector 001 is understandable.  
And I . . . am afraid to face them again.  
But if such does happen . . . will I face them alone?  
The dream I just had about the long-missing starship _Cornwallis_ - and a dear friend who disappeared with her seventeen years ago, Commander Jennifer Archer - echoes loudly in my memories. Also of concern to me is the fact that Cadet Carol Kirk was able to directly interface with that dream. No Questor - not even one born of the known telepathic species such as Vulcans, Betazoids and Phaëtons - have ever shown this sort of capability.  
It worries me . . ._

* * *

U.S.S. _Enterprise_, near Starbase 718 . . .

"You actually OVERHEARD the captain's dream?"

Carol Kirk nodded. "Yes. And it was really LOUD, too!" she said as she paced around before Jean-Luc Picard's desk in his ready room off to the port side of the main bridge. "I was having quite a nice dream about some girls I ran into out on the beach near the Presidio just before the last semester ended." She shook her head. "And then, all of a sudden, I started hearing this stupid 'We are the Borg; resistance is futile' speech in my mind. Next thing I knew, I'm yelling at them to shut up!"

Deanna Troi tried not to giggle on hearing that rant from the young cadet, who - if she didn't know better - was your typical Terran woman about to turn twenty and was now undergoing studies to be an officer at Starfleet Academy. Of course, the counsellor was one of a small but growing group who knew the real truth behind Carol Miramanee Kirk, the only daughter of Starfleet's most legendary captain. And even if she did understand that truth, dealing with all the interesting implications - both for Carol and for the older man seated behind his desk nearby - was something the half-Betazoid empath never thought she would EVER encounter after she had graduated years before from counsellor training. "And you were able to converse in this dream? Not just between each other, but with Commander Archer, too?" she asked as she turned to gaze on Picard.

The captain nodded. "Yes. It surprised me that I was able to converse with her. Or - as Miss Kirk believes - a replica of her which could be no different than the so-called 'Ilia probe' that boarded the original _Enterprise_ during the V'Ger incident back in 2273."

"Why do you believe that?" Troi asked.

"Because when Dad and his crew encountered V'Ger, it - as it expressed it through the Ilia-probe - didn't consider 'carbon units' to be intelligent lifeforms," Carol explained. "They were an 'infestation' that was hampering the _Enterprise_'s 'proper development' into a sentient being." She then hummed. "Unless this 'fifth unimatrix' the Collective spoke of - if that is the group that transformed Voyager Six into V'Ger - monitored V'Ger's voyage . . . "

"And then evolved - as V'Ger evolved - when Captain Decker merged with it a hundred years ago to help it leap past linear logic," Picard finished.

Carol nodded. "That's a possibility," she admitted, and then she sighed. "Well, if what the commander promised is going to happen, we'll get our answers one way or another soon enough."

The captain nodded before he sighed. "Still, it's not the best time for a missing starship to come back."

"Would the _Cornwallis_ be of any help in the fight over Earth?" Troi asked.

A shake of the head; both Picard and Carol had explained to the counsellor all the details they could remember about the dream they had just shared. "No. When she was rebuilt to be the test bed for the Galaxy-class ships, _Cornwallis_ was equipped with all the standard offensive and defensive armament that was later fitted on the _Enterprise_-D, but she never was used in any sort of standard fleet operation. She vanished in the general direction of System J-25 from Earth when she went on her first deep space trials, but . . . " A sigh. "Given what Miss Kirk and I heard Jennifer say to the Collective . . . "

"She may have fallen through the same wormhole that took Voyager Six to the planet Spock later saw in his mind-meld with V'Ger. This 'planet of living machines.'"

Both gazed on Carol. "Ambassador Spock MIND-MELDED with _**V'Ger**_?" Picard exclaimed, his eyes wide with disbelief on hearing this from the young Questor.

A snort. "Oh, yes, Captain!" Carol stated. "V'Ger, the mother Horta on Janus VI, the Guardian of Forever during that one time it went crazy when Dad was teaching at the Academy while he was dating Toni Salvatori . . .!" A sigh. "That one time Spock did that with the Guardian, Dad actually threatened to keel-haul him!"

Troi laughed, although she was quick to catch herself. "_Mon Dieu_ . . .!" Picard breathed out, shaking his head. "The risks they took back then . . . "

"Well, it was either that or V'Ger would have totally removed all the 'carbon-units infesting the Creator's homeworld,'" Carol admitted as she made finger-quotes with her hands. "And if Spock hadn't been able to get the Guardian's secondary systems working right, we never would have gone back in time to Sarpeidon's past to get his son Zar back to our time period to set the Guardian fully straight, then get rid of all of its creators who were using it to come back to our reality. And if Spock hadn't talked to Naraht's mother before he and all his brothers and sisters hatched, the poor lady would've just kept on killing all the miners on Janus VI until they were all gone and her babies were safe."

"Unbelievable," Troi noted.

"So what do you think?" Picard asked.

Carol perked. "About what, sir?"

"What's mounted on the _Cornwallis_' upper hull?"

The young Questor sighed as she considered that. Thanks to the pressures the heightened expectations many people at the Academy possessed towards her because of who her father was, Carol had actually found her time on the _Enterprise_ to have been quite enjoyable. She was strongly tested by the people here - as the captain was doing right now - but they didn't expect her to do any of the crazy and outlandish things Jim Kirk had done in his wild youth. "Some sort of accelerator cannon, just like they fitted on starships before photon torpedoes became the vogue in the early 2200s," she finally answered. "Or most likely, a type of muon weapon, like the N'shaii once used on their ships; Dad ran into them once. But as to what type of energy source it has, I can't say. Something that could disintegrate a whole Borg cube with _one shot_ . . .?"

He nodded. "Captain, are you convinced that we may run across the _Cornwallis_ soon?" Troi then asked. "Even if what you both experienced was unique . . . "

"I think it was far more than just a dream, Counsellor," the captain cut in. "Why would I dream of Jennifer Archer in the form of an Ilia-type probe? When I last saw her, she was as human as I was. And why would she say that I would soon be free of the Collective? _Cornwallis_ has been missing for seventeen years; if they were totally cut off from all contact with the Federation, how did they learn about my being assimilated and transformed into Locutus?" He sighed. "As we told you, the voice of the Collective mentioned a 'Fifth Unimatrix' that was separated from them. An organisation they clearly wish to have re-assimilated into the Collective. Jennifer confirmed that it was this Fifth Unimatrix that had saved her and the _Cornwallis_. This 'dream' is far . . . "

A whistle echoed through the room. "Riker to Picard."

He tapped his communicator badge. "Go ahead, Number One."

"Sir, we just got a signal from the _Constellation_. They're picking up a high concentration of tachytron radiation emitting from the general direction of Epsilon Scorpii," William Riker reported from the main bridge. "Captain Nakajima's moving to investigate it and she's invited us to join in on looking over what's there."

The captain nodded. "A possible interdimensional breach you mean?"

"Yes, sir," the first officer replied. "And save for our _Haida_, the only known ships that use that type of power source for warp drive . . . "

"Are the ships of the Earth Defence Force in another universe in the early part of the Twenty-first Century. One of which - their own _Haida_ - we encountered two years ago near Amargosa," Picard finished for him, a smile crossing his face. "Alter course for an interception with the _Constellation_, Number One. Signal Captain Nakajima that we're on our way to meet up with her. Maximum warp."

"Aye, sir!"

"What about what Starfleet ordered you to do?" Carol asked.

Picard gazed on the cadet. "It's close to the Neutral Zone - no more than fifteen light-years from where we are now - so that makes investigating a phenomena like this perfectly acceptable under our current orders, Miss Kirk. Report to your station."

Carol smiled as she bowed to him. "Aye, sir!"

* * *

Two light-years away from Epsilon Scorpii, twenty minutes later . . .

"Starship _Constellation_, this is starship _Enterprise_. We're approaching you now, bearing 134 mark 22 off the galactic core. Please respond."

The main view screen of the _Enterprise_ flicked over to reveal the bridge of her older sistership; _Constellation_ was the second of the Sovereign-class explorers to have been launched, right after the name-ship of the class had slipped clear of her dry dock at Utopia Planitia over Mars three years ago. "Starship _Enterprise_, this is starship _Constellation_, we're receiving you and have you now on short-range scanners," the first officer of the other ship, Commander Homare Nakajima - fraternal twin brother to _Constellation_'s own captain, Aya Nakajima; Picard had always wondered how it was possible for the two of them to serve together on the same ship all these years - called from his position in the first officer's chair. "Welcome to Epsilon Scorpii, Captain Picard. We just got here an hour ago ourselves. We haven't found much, but we have shuttles out sniffing around for the source of whatever is pouring that radiation into space around this sector."

"Homare, where is your sister?" Picard asked, dreading the answer.

"She's on the captain's gig right now doing her own scan."

Silence.

"And you didn't STOP her?" Riker demanded from his own chair.

"Number One!"

He jolted on hearing that snapped statement from his own captain, and then he sighed. "I apologise, sir. But if Captain Nakajima is out there on her own . . . "

"It's alright, Will," Homare assured him. "Counsellor Paek is with her now. And Commander Schwartz here is keeping a close eye on them on his scanners." He indicated _Constellation_'s operations officer, Lieutenant-Commander Henry Schwartz, seated now at the operations station located on the bridge's port forward side.

Picard nodded. "Understood. Picard to Nakajima on _Truxtun_. Are you there, Aya?"

"I'm here, Jean-Luc," came the reply as the main view screen changed to the rather roomy interior of a captain's gig built as part of a Sovereign-class starship; such was normally carried on the underside of the primary hull nineteen decks right below the bridge. Aya Nakajima was now in the pilot's chair as she played with her controls; beside her was _Constellation_'s ship's counsellor, Lieutenant-Commander Helena Paek, whom Picard remembered was a Phaëton, one of the few Korean-descent natives of that planet whose ancestors had fled Earth at the time of the Post-Atomic Horror. "So far, we can't seem to get a solid lock on whatever's pumping out all that radiation into this sector of space. Maybe you can get out some shuttles and the _Cousteau_ out to help sniff around."

Picard grinned. Despite the VERY unorthodox way she did things and her love of both singing and fighting, Aya Nakajima was seen by many as the "luckiest captain in Starfleet." Having commanded three ships named _Constellation_ since 2360 - when she by six months barely missed beating Jim Kirk's record of ten years' service from the time he graduated from the Academy to the time he was awarded command of the first _Enterprise_ - Aya had earned a reputation for almost reckless risk-taking, a willingness to stand on her own principles even if they flew in the face of long-standing regulations, plus an overwhelming concern for her crew that ensured they ALL survived both the Battle of Wolf 359 (when the Ambassador-class _Constellation_-D was lost) and a violent gravimetric disturbance near the Badlands just two years ago (which claimed the Nebula-class _Constellation_-E). The only non-Klingon _woman_ who had ever competed - and WON! - a bat'leth tournament on Forcas III several years before Worf himself gained that prize, Aya was both feared and respected within the halls of power on Qo'noS. Giving her a Sovereign-class ship as the seventh _Constellation_ to serve since Matthew Decker's ill-fated ship - as people in Moroboshi Hiromi's time would say it - was a no-brainer.

"I would've expected you to be heading for Earth right now, Aya," Picard then said.

Aya gave him an annoyed look, her dark brown eyes flashing with anger. She had her raven hair styled in a bob-cut, a hair band keeping most of it from spilling over her forehead. Still seemingly quite young thanks to a personal self-fitness regimen that even the Starfleet Marines would find quite excessive, she oozed a sense of dynamic youthfulness from every cell of her body. "So would I have expected _you_ to be doing, Jean-Luc," she softly scolded. "Admiral Hayes told me about that wonderful decision they made in the Land of Oz concerning NOT asking the one true expert on the Borg to come lead the fight against them." As people on the _Enterprise_'s bridge smirked at Aya's disdainful reference to Starfleet Command with that classic movie reference, she then smiled before checking a scanner screen. "Well, it's to be expected . . . WAIT!"

"I see it, Captain!" Helena called out; she had been monitoring things on her own scanner while her captain had been conversing with Picard. "_Truxtun_ to _Constellation_. We're picking up a massive tachytron energy wave coming out of what looks like a tear in the space-time fabric. Bearing 274 mark 63, range 7,700 kilometres!"

"Confirmed," Schwartz called out from _Constellation_ as Data moved to make his own scans. "I'm picking up a solid object inside the tear, Captain. It appears to be attempting to enter normal space."

"Data?" Picard urged.

"Confirmed, Captain. Single object, most likely a ship," the android stated as he tapped controls on his screen. "Configuration appears . . . Federation."

The captain blinked. "On screen!"

"Aye, sir."

The image of the interior of _Constellation_'s captain's gig vanished, revealling a field of stars . . . and a noticeable rip in the very vacuum that seemed to pulsate like a living thing, energy spilling out of it like a solar flare billowing from the surface of a sun. A second later, the unmistakable circular shape of the primary hull of a Federation starship emerged from the tear. As people were quick to notice how BIG that particular piece of starfaring architecture was, they then noted that it was attached to twin secondary hulls - one inverted over the primary hull, the other underneath - similar to what was once fitted on the Excelsior-class explorers. And attached to that were two sets of warp drives in modules similar to what a Galaxy-class ship had, they all interconnected with each other and both secondary hulls. At the aft end of the secondary hulls, a vertical pylon connected their fantails, that bulging out at the level of the primary hull far forward to allow a large impulse drive system to be fitted there for auxiliary power. And the whole ship - as people on the bridges of both Sovereign-class explorers began to recognise what she was - was over _**eight hundred **_metres long.

"_Mon Dieu_ . . .!" Picard breathed out.

"Sacred Buddha . . .!" Aya nearly croaked.

The bridge crews of both starships were stunned silent, many in the duty stations on the sides and the back of those structures standing up to get a better view, as they took a moment to watch the massive newcomer drift to a halt, now roughly ten thousand kilometres off _Constellation_'s starboard quarter and _Enterprise_'s port side. After a moment, Picard found his voice. "Lieutenant Moonstar?"

Alyssa Greene's best friend Charlene Moonstar, whose ancestors among the Oglala Lakota had migrated to Phaëton at the time of the Post-Atomic Horror, blinked before she straightened herself and then moved to do a scan from her tactical station. "The new vessel appears, for the most part, to be a Stadacona-class ship, Captain. I am detecting rather large structural modifications on her, mostly in the upper secondary hull forward and the primary hull as well," the tactical systems lieutenant stated as she tried not to shiver too much at the thought of what had just sailed into their sector of space. "Picking up ship's identification beacon at this time . . . " She then paused as her eyes read over the name before breathing out. "Sir, it's . . . "

"The _Cornwallis_," Picard finished for the grey-eyed, raven-haired woman.

She looked up at him, and then nodded. "Yes, sir. Shall I hail them?"

"I do not believe we can assume that the persons currently aboard the _Cornwallis_ may be the same members of the ship's company that vanished seventeen years ago."

Eyes locked on Data. "What do you mean?" Riker demanded.

The android turned to gaze on him. "I am detecting sixty-two lifeforms aboard the _Cornwallis_ at this time, Commander," Data calmly stated. "All of them are similar in physical and molecular structure to what was referred to as the 'Ilia-probe' that was sent aboard the original _Enterprise_ during the V'Ger incident in 2273. The ship's sensors have not detected any organic life forms aboard the vessel at this time."

Silence.

More silence.

Still more silence.

And then . . .

"Captain?"

Picard looked back. "Yes, Lieutenant?"

"_Cornwallis_ is hailing us, sir," Charlene stated.

"On screen."

The image on the main view screen changed to reveal a wide and open bridge, so similar to what most of the crew now aboard _Enterprise_ had worked in no more than two years before that it made many of them shudder as the surreal nature of the moment overcame them. Seated in the three chairs before the tactical station were three women, all of whom were wearing the old-style jumpsuit-like uniforms that had been Starfleet standard at the time. In the first officer's chair was a Vulcan woman in operations gold, lieutenant-commander's pips on her collar, with glossy red hair done in a high beehive and deep brown eyes. In the counsellor's chair was a Terran woman in science blue, lieutenant's pips on the collars, with dirty blonde hair styled off the collar and dark blue eyes on her face. And in the middle of the two . . .

"Hello, Jennifer," Picard said to Jennifer Archer. "Welcome home."

"We're glad to be home, Jean-Luc," the first officer - and obviously acting commanding officer - of the starship _Cornwallis_ replied . . .

_**To be continued . . .**_


	2. Breaking The Lines

Now passing Deep Space Five on course for Earth . . .

"Are you sure of this?"

The endless squabble of voices echoed through the One's mind as she allowed her body to be carefully dismantled for transmission to the temporal transit unit. She took a moment to consider that information, and then she slowly nodded. "Deploy two more cubes to this sector to deal with that ship," she ordered as her cranial/spinal assembly was extracted. "The Fifth Unimatrix must not be allowed to continue to disrupt the Collective's quest for Order. The operation will proceed as planned."

Those voices chanted an affirmation . . .

* * *

Vulcan, the Khal Fortress . . .

"Peace and long life, Supervisor 194."

"May you live long and prosper, Elder T'Nega. And please, call me Gary."

"As you desire, Gary," the blonde, blue-eyed Vulcan woman in the simple robes said. "Welcome to the Khal. This is your first visit here, is it not?"

"It is," the raven-haired, blue-eyed Terran - who was much more than just a mere Terran, just like his host was more than just a mere Vulcan - said as he allowed his feline companion, Isis, to crawl out from under one of the folds of the robes he had put on to allow himself to remain somewhat inconspicuous if a true Vulcan happened to come in to visit T'Nega unexpectedly. "I think it's safe for you, Isis."

The raven-haired domestic shorthair cat meowed before she hopped down on the floor and then morphed into her human form, that of a raven-haired, grey-eyed humanoid woman who was also dressed to merge in with the local culture. She seemed to purr as she inclined her head in greeting to the Questor, and then she took a seat in a nearby couch, almost reclining herself as she gazed on her pet and his companion. T'Nega's eyebrow arched in curiosity before she gazed on Seven. "So when did you learn?"

"Actually, Roberta told me shortly before she Crossed into the Fold," Gary Seven stated as he took his own chair, indicating his other companion.

T'Nega then gazed on the blonde, blue-eyed Terran woman in the very plain traveller's robes who had accompanied the Aegis supervisor to this remote fortress. "Sister, peace and long life. Be welcome here," she said as she nodded her greetings to Roberta Lincoln, raising her hand in the parted-finger salute of her people.

"May you live long and prosper. And you're too kind, sister," the Terran-form Questor said as raised her hand to return the salute, and then she bowed her head. Despite her still looking like the 1960s flower child Gary Seven had first met in New York City well over four centuries ago, just before the first Moon landing, years of experience working with the man beside her as she learned the true ways of the universe had allowed a remarkable maturity to fall on her shoulders, one she bore well. "I hope we're not intruding on anything right now," she stated as she took a seat beside Seven, putting him between her and Isis.

"No, there will be no tours for the next while. A sandstorm is passing through the Forge at this time and all local trams are forbidden from leaving their stations for this location," T'Nega reported. "So what does bring you both here today?"

"It appears there might be an odd snag in our efforts to restore Roy's memories back," the Aegis supervisor stated. "I don't think it'll be a very dangerous thing, but you never can tell with these sorts of incidents."

"How so?" T'Nega asked.

"Have you ever heard of the starship _Cornwallis_?"

The Vulcan-form Questor's eyebrow arched again . . .

* * *

Captain's Log, Stardate 50893.7,_  
Having joined U.S.S. _Constellation_ close to the Epsilon Scorpii star system to assist in their analysis of a massive increase of tachytron radiation - the same type of radiation used by ships of the planet Sagussa, the Avalonians descent of that world and the planet Earth in the year 2010 in another dimension for their warp drive systems - in this sector of space, we were about to begin an intensive examination before the fabric of space-time then opened to reveal a long-lost Federation starship, the last active Stadacona-class Marine heavy troop transport, the U.S.S. _Cornwallis_, which vanished over seventeen years ago.  
However, it seems that the _Cornwallis_ - to say anything of her surviving sixty-two crew members - did not return to the Federation unscathed . . ._

* * *

U.S.S. _Cornwallis_, the lower secondary hull . . .

"Permission to come aboard, Commander Archer?"

"Permission granted, Captain Picard." A warm smile crossed Jennifer Archer's face as she stepped away from the transporter controls; she was the only person in the room there to receive the advanced landing party. "Your first officer didn't chain you to the command chair when you decided to come visit us, Jean-Luc?"

"I convinced him that there are times the captain must take the lead in an away mission," Picard said as he and Doctor Beverly Crusher stepped down onto the main deck of the transporter room, his hand reaching out for hers. "Welcome back, Jennifer."

"Part of me was dreading this day given what you no doubt noticed has happened to us, but part of me is more than glad to be back," Archer said as she gently shook his hand, and then she perked as the _Enterprise_'s chief medical officer moved to scan her. "Oh, please, Doctor, go right on ahead," she bade. "It'll make it easier for you to fully accept what's happened to all of us these last few years."

"A willing patient. How nice," Crusher said with a wry smile before she passed the portable scanner over the commander's chest and thorax, and then she waited for the results to come up on the tricorder's main screen. As soon as they were there, she found herself gaping in shock. "Oh, my God . . .!" she breathed out.

"Beverly?" Picard prodded.

Archer blinked, and then she gaped. "'Beverly?' As in Beverly Crusher? Jack Crusher's wife?" she asked, pointing to the doctor, and then she smiled. "Oh, my! Isn't this a small universe? When did she get assigned to your ship?"

"She's been with me for most of the last nine years, ever since we commissioned the last _Enterprise_," Picard stated, and then he sighed. No sense avoiding it now. "Beverly?"

"Well, in all respects, Commander Archer is exactly like the Ilia-probe that boarded Captain Kirk's _Enterprise_ back a hundred years ago," Crusher explained. "But I can also detect elements of organic DNA in her body which match that of what readings were taken on her when she was last given a physical back in 2355, the year before the _Cornwallis_ vanished. I can also detect faint traces of radiation damage in those DNA traces." She gazed on the _Cornwallis_' acting captain. "I assume . . . "

"That is the reason the intelligences of the Fifth Unimatrix - the 'planet of living machines' Ambassador Spock described after he had a chance to mind-meld with V'Ger during the original contact the old _Enterprise_ was involved with a century ago - moved to convert us to as close to Questor norm for our specific birth races as their technology could equal. A way of 'paying the Federation back' for their helping V'Ger - and by extension, the whole of the Fifth Unimatrix; they always kept a close communications bond with V'Ger during its journey back to the home planet of its creator - to evolve into higher forms of being. 'Carbon units' - to quote Lieutenant Ilia's replica - are now seen by V'Ger and its fellow sentients from the Fifth Unimatrix as sentient lifeforms in their own right and will be respected as such if ever encountered in the future. That's pretty much thanks to both Captain Decker and Lieutenant Ilia, who was revived after V'Ger became fully sentient, allowing her own mind to merge with the body of the replica made by V'Ger." As the captain nodded in understanding, Archer gave him a knowing look. "How's it possible?"

"How is what possible?" he asked.

"That Jim Kirk is alive and has a daughter? And a _Questor_ one at that?"

He chuckled. "That's a bit of a long story, Jennifer. If time wasn't so precious, I'd tell you everything now. Unfortunately, the Borg are not giving us much of a chance to catch up on a lot of old space stories," he confessed before a tired sigh escaped him. "While I personally believe that you are the person I remember from all those years ago - that 'dream' Cadet Kirk and I shared when we communicated with you earlier today being the one thing that fully convinced me of that - Starfleet might not be so convinced. I hope you realise that."

She nodded in understanding. Watching the acting commander of the _Cornwallis_, Crusher herself could understand why her old friend would be convinced this woman was the real Jennifer Archer, a sixth-generation descendant of the legendary Jonathan Archer, the captain of the NX-class United Earth Starfleet explorer _Enterprise_ in the 2150s who later served as the fourth President of the United Federation of Planets between 2184-2192. "We all figured as much, Jean-Luc. That was part of the reason we held off on returning to the Federation for as long as we did, especially after remembering all the problems your operations officer has experienced while serving, to say anything of when he was just trying to get INTO Starfleet," Archer confessed. "But even if we are - in as many ways - as logical and rational as Data, we are all still quite ourselves deep in our hearts and souls. At least I HOPE we are." As Picard nodded in understanding, she shrugged. "All I could propose is find someone who is a close relation to T'Cel - she's my acting first officer; she was the operations officer here before our accident - or knew her before 2356, then bring him or her here to mind-meld with her. I doubt Di's friendship with Data will help here."

Picard perked. "Di . . . oh! Dianna Neilson, you mean! She was the lieutenant who was seated in the counsellor's chair beside you when you signalled us!"

A nod. "Di and Data were year-mates at the Academy." Archer then smirked as she winked at her friend. "It's a lucky thing that we do have machine logic to fall onto these days. She had a crush on the poor man something awful when they were cadets together. She confessed to me that if she was still fully organic, she would have used the transporter and beamed right onto the bridge of your ship to give him a big kiss!" She stopped before she shrugged. "Then again, what's to stop her from doing that now?"

Crusher laughed as Picard chuckled. "Well, I believe the lieutenant will find Mister Data a lot more agreeable these days than he might have been at the Academy," the captain explained. At Archer's questioning look, he added, "His late father prepared a special emotion chip for him to be fitted with before he passed away several years ago. He is still quite rational, but he can experience emotions now and is trying to improve himself as time goes on."

"Really? I guess we better prepare for a wedding then!"

The visitors from the _Enterprise_ gaped in shock at their host, and then they laughed again before Picard tapped his communicator to signal his ship . . .

* * *

The main bridge, a half-hour later . . .

"_**DATA!**_"

The android gasped before nearly fifty kilograms of a very ecstatic lieutenant flew into his arms to swamp him with an embrace. "Dianna . . . HEY!" he cried out before he was knocked backwards into the nearest bulkhead by the force of the impact, and then he blinked as said person then leaned up to deliver a tongue-filled kiss onto his lips. "Mmmmpth . . .!"

Watching this quite exuberant reunion, the joint away team from _Enterprise_ and _Constellation_ could only stare in shock. "It appears Lieutenant Neilson has clearly missed the commander's company," Lieutenant-Commander T'Pall, _Constellation_'s chief science officer, mused as she observed this beautiful moment standing beside T'Cel.

"She has," _Cornwallis_' acting executive officer noted. "Of all of us who survived the transition through the wormhole to come into contact with the Fifth Unimatrix's central hub, then were forced to endure conversion to our current synthetic forms due to the massive radiation damage the ship took during the transit, Dianna was the most eager to undergo the process. Her love for Data has grown quite exponentially over the years. Of all of us, she was the most passionate about our returning to Federation space as soon as _Cornwallis_ was declared space-worthy by Lieutenant Barry."

"Why didn't you return back to the Federation then, Commander?" Deanna Troi asked; she had been seated in the counsellor's chair reviewing the basic mission logs of the last seventeen years to prepare her own analysis of what happened to the _Cornwallis_.

"Primarily because we needed a chance to fully adjust to our new circumstances, Commander," T'Cel stated. "As I believe any Questor could explain to you, to suddenly transform from a fully organic form of life into a synthetic form of life is quite a disconcerting process, even if the Unimatrix's sentients did all they could to ensure our bodies' original capabilities were as replicated as possible. Atop that, we were concerned as to how people would react to what happened to us. We knew of the Questors - it was a Questor born of a race in Gamma Quadrant who had effectively severed the Fifth Unimatrix from the Collective eight centuries ago, shortly after the Collective itself had first formed - and after Jennifer was able to properly access Captain Hansen's personal files and learned of the security measures taken to keep their existence as secret as possible from the general public in the Federation, we came to believe that our immediate return to Federation space would cause far too much trouble." She nodded to Data, who had taken a smiling, shyly blushing Dianna Neilson aside as they enjoyed a private conversation. "You'll no doubt recall how senior leaders in the Federation viewed the commander at that time, Commander Troi."

"Yes," Troi said, nodding. "Some years ago, an officer from the Daystrom Institute wanted Data reassigned there so he could be disassembled and studied so that more like him could be constructed. Fortunately, Captain Picard . . . "

"_**WHAT?**_"

Everyone froze as they all turned to stare at a now VERY angry Dianna Neilson. Before anyone could attempt to calm the lieutenant down, Data sighed. "Di, before you seek to permanently dismember Commander Maddox - as Counsellor Troi was just explaining to Commander T'Cel - it was judged that I do possess all the rights of a sentient being and therefore, had the right to refuse the reassignment to the Institute. Those rights were also extended to my daughter, Lal. You need not concern yourself."

"Maddox?" Neilson growled as she glared at him, spitting out that name like it was something utterly vile she had just tasted. "Wasn't he the same man who disagreed with your trying to get in the Academy in the first place?"

"The same."

A snarl escaped her, and then she stopped before she gazed once more at him, the surprise on her face plain. "Daughter?" she asked. "You have a daughter, Data?"

"That is correct."

Neilson considered that for a moment before she asked, "Like you?"

"That is correct," Data calmly answered as those visiting the _Cornwallis_ all tried not to laugh or react too overtly at this peculiar scene playing out before them. "However, in many ways, Lal is far more advanced that I. Which is what - so I have learned - parents of all races would ultimately desire of their children."

A look of apprehension then appeared on her face. "Is she at the Institute?"

"No, she is on Planet Mudd at this time, under the supervision of Doctor Lauren Korby - a Terran-form Questor - and Chief Coordinator Norman."

"Are the people at the Institute trying to get her off the planet?"

"No, Di," Data said as he tried not to smile too much; he remembered well the many times the then-Cadet Dianna Neilson had brought down all sorts of obscene and profane maledictions onto the soul of one Bruce Maddox for the simple fact that the scientist couldn't simply SEE her android classmate as a sentient being! "In fact, Commander Maddox actually _supported_ my decision to allow Lal to study there."

Neilson looked sceptical. "Really?"

"Yes." A grin. "He CAN learn, Di."

The science lieutenant - she was a trained astrophysicist - hummed, and then she sighed. "Okay, he gets a stay of execution!" As people around them bit back the urge to laugh out loud at that show of histrionics, she added, "C'mon, I'll show you the main computer core." Grabbing his hand, she literally pulled him into the nearest turbolift car and they were off.

Silence fell over the bridge as people considered what they had just witnessed, and then Geordi La Forge breathed out, "Did I just _see_ that?"

That did it; everyone else - save for T'Cel and T'Pall - laughed . . .

* * *

Sick Bay, a half-hour later . . .

"Incredible . . . "

"So what's your opinion, Lexi?"

_Constellation_'s chief medical officer - and the only Questor serving aboard that ship - Commander Alexa Murphy took a deep breath as she lowered her tricorder. "Well, now that I've had a chance to compare how all the survivors here were converted into synthetic lifeforms like that probe that went aboard Jim Kirk's _Enterprise_ a century ago to people like myself, I have to say that the people of this Fifth Unimatrix really got a lot of things right." She gazed down on _Cornwallis_' chief engineer, Lieutenant Lynn Barry, who had volunteered to be given a full medical by the Terran-form Questor before she would take Murphy's shipmate, chief engineer Commander Garmel Shran, up into the forward engineering section so he could inspect the energy cores that gave the vessel its awesome power for himself. "There are some improvements that can be made, I believe, but I would like to take the chance to do some detailed studies before we start helping these kids Cross into the Fold." Murphy was of the same generation of medical officer as Leonard McCoy; she had been enticed into returning to Starfleet by Aya Nakajima when - after hearing of what befell both the _Enterprise_-D and the S.S. _Tsiolkovsky_ back in 2364 - she decided she needed a chief medical officer who wouldn't fall ill or be otherwise incapacitated and prevented from performing her duty when things got crazy.

"Can it be done?" Crusher asked.

"Possibly, Beverly," the grey-eyed, brown-haired Murphy breathed out. "But as I just said, there may be some unique features these kids have that - if such wind up getting removed from them during the Crossing - could hurt them very badly."

"You sound like you speak from experience, Doctor," Picard noted.

"I do, Captain," Murphy stated. "I've helped seven people Cross into the Fold since I went through it myself in 2261. It's not just a quick injection of the stem cells my body produces which serves as the agent to commence the molecular conversion from my blood stream using my fingernails to penetrate the convertee's skin, then following that with an energy burst from my own body to get the process going. Becoming something like me is a massive psychological shock for anyone, no matter how they've prepared to face it when it actually happens." A sigh as she gazed at Barry, who was now sitting up and moving to straighten her clothes. "The one good thing I can say is that since these kids have already endured quite the shock when the Unimatrix saved their lives . . . "

"Crossing into the Fold's not going to be so much different," Aya finished.

"Yes."

The others standing around the diagnostic bed nodded. "Well, thank you for your cooperation, Lieutenant Barry," Picard then stated as Barry got to her feet. "I suspect you and Commander Shran have some things to discuss at this time."

"Yes, Captain. Excuse us, please." And with that, she and the Andorian chief engineer of the _Constellation_ walked out of the room.

Picard and Aya exchanged a look. "The brainiacs at Starfleet are going to tear themselves to pieces over this ship," the latter warned as she gave the former a knowing look. "Sure, all the advances she has could make our jobs much easier and safer in the long term. Especially given how this ship can travel between GALAXIES in just a few HOURS! But given what the people on that planet ALSO added to this ship . . . " Here, she pointed up to emphasise the rather large wave accelerator cannon that had been built into the forward end of the upper secondary hull.

He nodded before gazing on Jennifer Archer. "Have you had to use that thing?"

"Twice, both times against planetoids the size of the Moon that were threatening inhabited worlds we came in contact with due to a potential collision, Much that we are prepared to use it against a massed military target, we didn't encounter a situation which required that sort of force at all since we first set out from the Unimatrix," the acting commander of _Cornwallis_ calmly replied. "We can pump out a maximum of four decillion joules of energy in one shot, Jean-Luc . . . but it totally drains all the tachytron induction tanks we have in the primary hull and could easily render us next to powerless for over an hour before we could perform another shot."

"Could you lower the output yield?" Aya wondered.

"We could theoretically limit the output to lower values, but the damage we can do isn't as great, Aya," Archer replied. "Minimum realistic value, the lowest power shot we could unleash is about twenty-seven sextillion joules of energy."

"How much to destroy a Borg cube?" Picard pressed.

"About two hundred sextillion joules if they haven't found some way to shield themselves or if they try to dodge before the bolt hits. Atop that, we would have to gain a clear shot and hopefully, no one would be behind the thing when we hit it."

The two captains exchanged a look, and then Picard tapped his communicator pin. "Picard to _Enterprise_. Commander Greene?"

"Yes, Captain?" Alyssa Greene - who was now the officer of the watch while most of the ship's senior staff were aboard _Cornwallis_ - replied.

"Are you monitoring signals about the Borg ship making its way to Sector 001?"

"Yes, sir. The Borg cube is now twenty-five light-years from making system-fall at the orbit of Neptune. Estimated time of arrival is within thirty minutes."

"How many ships are in the system waiting for it?"

"Thirty-six. Including the _Defiant_ and the _Bozeman_."

Picard and Aya exchanged a knowing grin. The current _Bozeman_ was a sistership of the _Enterprise_ and the _Constellation_, fitted with the latest technology - including some radical new designs that had been created by weapons-smiths employed by one Fleet Admiral Ky'los Shyrae, the Director-in-Chief of Section 31, Starfleet's top secret special defence and intelligence agency - and was commanded by a man who understood intrinsically well about forward defence: Morgan "Bulldog" Bateson, a man who had commanded a border cutter in the late twenty-third century until a temporal distortion propelled his ship from 2278 to 2368 and a near-collision with the _Enterprise_-D.

The _Defiant_, the first ship produced in response to the Battle of Wolf 359, was a prototype escort vessel that packed as much firepower in as small of a hull as could be possibly built. Recently activated thanks to the growing tensions with the Dominion in Gamma Quadrant, the small warship was permanently assigned to Deep Space Nine under the command of a survivor of Wolf 359, Captain Benjamin Sisko (whose wife, Jennifer, had died on the old _Saratoga_ in that fight). No doubt, Picard knew, the _Defiant_ would be commanded by his former chief security officer, Lieutenant-Commander Worf, as Sisko himself was needed back on Deep Space Nine to keep watch on events there.

"What about the _Haida_, Commander?" Aya asked.

"She's making a maximum speed run from the area of Pacifica to try to join up with the rest of the fleet, but she's not due to arrive for at least half-a-day, Captain," Alyssa responded. "Captain Kirk is trying his best to get there sooner, but unfortunately, _Haida_ doesn't have the ability to go to transwarp as _Cornwallis_ does."

"Even though technically, we don't actually travel through transwarp space, Commander Greene," Jennifer Archer cut in. "We simply SIMULATE it using tachytron energy to create a hyperwarp bubble that allows us to press through warp space at speeds that are as close to infinite as could be conceived. Without risking all the adverse affects actually breaking Warp Ten could do to any organic that's aboard the ship."

Both captains nodded as they considered that. The _Haida_ was the prototype of a new design of escort cruisers that had been designed and built by Port Weller Spacedocks, the same company that built the Stadacona-class ships decades earlier. In effect, a larger version of the Intrepid-class light explorers like the missing U.S.S. _Voyager_, Tribal-class ships like the _Haida_ welded the same level of armament as _Enterprise_ or _Constellation_, but did it in a smaller hull. Even better, she was commanded by the most legendary captain ever to serve throughout Federation history: James T. Kirk. And while he might not know the Borg as he would know the Klingons and the Romulans, Kirk was cut out of the same mould as his contemporary Morgan Bateson.

"We can't stay out of this fight, Jean-Luc," Aya warned.

A nod. "Agreed, Aya." Picard then turned to Archer. "Jennifer, could you actually jump ahead of us using the tachytron induction tanks to create a hyperwarp bubble around the ship so you could move your ship into Sector 001 right away?"

The acting commander of _Cornwallis_ closed her eyes as she mentally reached into the ship's central computer systems to ascertain the status of the seven large tanks that absorbed the unique energy which came from the collision points between dimensions to funnel into either the warp core to make a hyperwarp jump . . . or into the accelerator cannon to launch a devastating wave of energy to destroy targets as large as small planetoids. After a brief moment, she then relaxed. "If you want us right now to go into a fight against a cube, we can't jump in, then fire the cannon right then and there, Jean-Luc. Atop it draining us nearly to the point where we might be helpless if whoever are in charge of this attack calls in friends, we're still getting used to travelling that way. And to be honest, we've only used the ship's hyperwarp capabilities to do intergalactic jumps, just like the one we did from the Andromeda Galaxy here where we ran across you."

Picard nodded in understanding. Much that _Cornwallis_' enhancements were quite spectacular in their own right from what he had been briefed so far about them - and much that he hoped her surviving crew would be capable enough to plunge into a fight against the Borg - he knew that underneath it all, despite their all being living machines not so different from Data himself, they were still trying to get used to their ship's remarkable new powers. And given that they had spent a lot of the last fifteen years since their departure from the hearth world of the Fifth Unimatrix doing what Federation starships had pretty much always done - to "boldly go where no one had gone before" - and had taken such voyages all the way to different GALAXIES to make contact with hundreds of different civilisations, asking them to plunge right into a battle situation right after they had just returned home was a bit much.

"At normal warp speed then?" Aya asked.

"If you leave to go to Earth, we'd be an hour behind you," Archer said.

Picard and Aya exchanged a look. "Well, are we disobeying orders, Captain Picard?" the latter asked as she gave the former a knowing smirk.

"Let's get the senior staff together, Captain Nakajima," Picard bade . . .

* * *

The bridge, ten minutes later . . .

"Currently, the fleet - augmented by _Defiant_ and_ Bozeman_ - has mustered together past the Jupiter orbit line," Aya explained as she indicated the positions of the Federation fleet now standing in the way between an oncoming Borg cube and the planet Earth on the main view screen. Atop those people who had come aboard _Cornwallis_, the senior staffs still aboard _Enterprise_ and _Constellation_ were listening in from their respective ships' bridges. "The cube itself is twenty minutes away from de-warping at the Neptune orbit line. If we head out now to intercept it, we'll be on-scene about ten minutes later, with _Cornwallis_ coming in an hour after that. As you might all realise, Commander Archer and her crew don't have the experience to do just a short hyperwarp jump since they only used that capability for trans-galactic distances."

"We'll try to save something for you guys when you get there," Homare Nakajima said as he gazed apologetically at Jennifer Archer, who now sat in _Cornwallis_' captain's chair.

"It will be appreciated, Commander," she stated, smirking.

Laughter filled the room, both hopeful and rueful. The majority of the crews of both _Enterprise_ and _Constellation_ all readily recalled their last encounter together with the Borg at Wolf 359 six years ago. For Picard himself, the endless whispering chants of the massed voices of the Collective that had haunted him for the last few days had quieted down since he had woken a few hours earlier, the dream he had of being forced to transform into Locutus interrupted by a rather irate Carol Kirk. Thinking of the young cadet - who should be currently manning a station on the bridge monitoring the ship's communications systems - the captain then frowned. _We still have to find out how is it possible she was able to tap into my dream_, he mused before turning his attention back to the briefing Aya was giving.

" . . . so hopefully with the new phaser harmonics and the multi-dimensional explosive force yields in the quantum torpedoes we now carry, we'll be able to punch through their defences and cause them some serious harm before they can move to repair themselves and press on the fight," Aya stated. "Luckily, we seem to be dealing with just _one_ cube, so hopefully, between us, _Defiant_ and _Bozeman_, we'll be able to cut that thing up just nice enough for _Cornwallis_ to finish her off with one big bang!"

"And it WILL be a BIG bang!" Dianna Neilson promised.

More laughter. "What if they attempt to board us, Captain?" Helena Paek asked from her place on the _Constellation_'s bridge.

Aya took a deep breath. "Doctor?" she asked.

"I'm prepared," Alexa Murphy declared.

Picard blinked, and then he paled before he turned to stare at his opposite number. "You can't be serious, Aya! To actually . . .!"

"I've not lost a single crewman in battle yet, Jean-Luc," she said as she glared at him. "I'm not going to start that process now. Those who have elected to consider undergoing the Crossing have already made their decisions known and they're marked in their personnel files under the standard security protocols. Those who would not wish to endure such a thing . . . " A sigh. "Their wishes will be respected."

"Jean-Luc, we can't possibly ask Carol to do something like _that_!" Beverly Crusher objected as many of the people from the _Enterprise_ found themselves staring at their friends from the _Constellation_ with a mixture of shock and awe on realising what many of them had been given the option to do if they ever faced the ugly fate of being assimilated into the Collective. "Even if she is programmed to do such a thing . . . "

"Doctor, before we judge whether or not it could be done, it would be only right and proper to ask Cadet Kirk if she is willing to do that sort of thing," Data interrupted.

Everyone nodded. "Did you overhear that, Miss Kirk?" Picard asked.

A sigh. "Yes, sir, I did," Carol called over from the _Enterprise_. "I . . . " A pause. "I think I can do it, but if what I understand about what the _Constellation_'s people have been given the choice to do if they face being assimilated . . . " A more audible sigh. "If it comes to that and I know a person is willing to do it, I'll do it without hesitation. But . . . to be frank with you, sir, I've never done it before and I've not been encouraged to consider doing it since I started at the Academy."

"We've got at least thirty minutes before we're into the fight," Murphy said. "That's more than enough time for me to run through the process with you before we get there." A smirk crossed her face. "Think of it as a prequel to the _Kobayashi Maru_."

Carol moaned. "Joy . . . "

Rueful chuckles from all around. "Both Captain Nakajima and I are about to disobey direct orders from Starfleet Command about entering this battle," Picard then stated. "If anyone wishes to object about our violating those orders to not get involved in this matter, I will be quite pleased to note same in my log. Captain?"

"Same here," Aya affirmed with a nod.

Silence fell, and then William Riker breathed out. "I never joined the service to just sit back and watch fellow servicemen get slaughtered."

"Neither did I," Homare added.

Others nodded their agreement. Picard then nodded. "Let's get going."

* * *

The _Enterprise_, ten minutes later . . .

"Captain?"

Picard perked, and then he smiled as a dataPADD was handed over to him. "Thank you, Master Chief," he said after giving Heather Hilton an appreciative smile before he turned to gaze on the PADD to see what was written there. "How are the crew?"

"Nervous but prepared, sir," the command master chief petty officer of the _Enterprise_ stated. A propulsion systems engineer by training and a thirty-year veteran of Starfleet starship engine rooms, she was a native of Phaëton who possessed what was locally addressed as "technopathic" and "technokinetic" powers; she had the ability to directly interface with machines psionically to better ascertain and repair damaged components. Picard had fought hard to get the grey-eyed woman with the greying head of red hair assigned as his ship's senior non-commissioned officer; a Phaëton techno-psi was worth her weight in gold-pressed latinum. Fortunately, Heather was good friends with Alyssa Greene's family and the ship's chief communication systems engineer officer had been more than pleased to convince the older woman to transfer to _Enterprise_ as the starship's command master chief. "Many of them have been through this before; they were with Commander Riker six years ago." She didn't elaborate on that out of respect for the captain's feelings. "The others have only their training to fall back onto, but they'll be there when they're needed."

Picard nodded, and then blinked on noting a flashing message on the PADD. After taking a moment to consider what had been said in that single sentence, he handed the device back. "Thank you, Master Chief," he said again. "Number One, I'm going to do a quick walk-around before we get there. You have the bridge."

"Aye, sir," Riker stated as the captain got up and headed to one of the turbolifts, and then he flashed a knowing look to Troi, who nodded in return.

Meanwhile, the captain was currently descending to Deck Ten, heading right for the landing that led into the ship's main lounge, called "Ten-Forward" in honour of the original lounge of the same name on the _Enterprise_-D. As he stepped off the turbolift and walked into the seemingly empty space, he called out, "Chief Yahe."

Karis Yahe perked on hearing her name called out, and then she came over to place herself by the bar. "Anything calm and soothing to drink before we go into battle, Captain?" the tall, lavender-haired woman with the pale green eyes asked, a shy smile crossing her face. "Or is this more a business visit?"

"It's business," Picard stated.

The El-Aurian nodded as she reached into her jacket pocket to gently tap the small device she had hidden there. "We're secure now," she stated; the device she had activated a series of defensive mechanisms in the room that would seal off all of Ten-Forward from any sort of monitoring, interally or externally. "I've already signalled Fleet Admiral Shyrae about yours and Captain Nakajima's intentions. She'll have the orders concerning both _Enterprise_ and _Constellation_ changed right away."

The captain nodded. Since the _Enterprise_-E had been commissioned without any provisions for civilian dependants to accompany the crew, he couldn't get Guinan to come aboard to act as the ship's chief bartender and unofficial spiritual advisor. Fortunately for him, the multi-centenarian had known of a fellow survivor of the _Lakul_'s encounter with the Nexus eighty years before who was now serving in Starfleet as a mess management culinary specialist - a trade that did the same things for Starfleet personnel as what stewards and cooks had done in the Canadian Forces - and was a senior chief petty officer in rank. Having such a person assigned aboard the _Enterprise_ - even if Karis was only four centuries old; "She's a spring chicken compared to me!" Guinan had joked about it before she introduced her friend to Picard a year ago - would be seen as natural.

Even better, Karis Yahe was also seen as a "reserve" member of Section 31, which would give Jean-Luc Picard a direct link to Fleet Admiral Ky'los Shyrae. Perhaps one of the most powerful people in the Federation as a whole as well as a true believer in the alliance's ultimate goals of peaceful co-existence between the various sentient species of the galaxy, she also possessed a frightful pragmatism descent from her years of service in the Andorian Imperial Guard which made her quite wary of anything that seemed too good to be true; in Shyrae's experience, things like that usually led to ugly traps that, when sprung, normally cost a lot of lives. And while Picard himself didn't really care too much for Section 31's sometimes violently uncontrolled ways, he did realise there were good people in the organisation. People like Shyrae herself . . . as well as Karis Yahe. Even if she often associated with people whose morals were questionable even at the best of times, the young El-Aurian - like her ultimate boss in the organisation - truly believed in the proper mandate of Section 31 as envisioned by the Andorian-form Questor two centuries before when she was assigned as the unit's permanent director-in-chief: People who gladly and willingly went out to deal with the problems other elements of Starfleet couldn't deal with, all to ensure the higher goals of the United Federation of Planets could be pursued.

To ensure those who dreamed of a better future could still dream . . .

. . . and perhaps, one day in the future, could make it real.

And thus, forever eliminate the need for a Section 31.

"How are you feeling?" Karis asked as she prepared a special version of Earl Grey tea - touched with a little jasmine to give it a nice fragrance - for him.

"Scared," he admitted.

"So am I," she mused. "I felt the dream you had earlier today. You can actually sense it when they're close, can you?"

A sigh. "Yes. Hopefully, I can use that against them when we get there." He nodded thanks as she handed him the cup. "How about you?"

"I don't know," she confessed. "Part of me is scared to face them again," she explained as she moved to make some tea and coffee she would then place in travel cups; Picard had an idea of whom she intended them for. "But part of me - I think it's the part that's touched by the meson crystal you created to obtain my 'horcrux' from the Nexus two years ago with the help of that ship from that other Earth - doesn't seem too bothered by what the Borg represent. As if they're not a real threat."

He gazed quizzically at her. "What do you mean?"

A sigh. "I meditate often." The senior chief mess culinary specialist, on her spare time, led classes in self-defence, teaching people a mixture of various ancient Earth martial arts like Worf had taught _moQbara_ when he had been the security chief of the _Enterprise_-D. "Believe it or not, it was my father who taught Roy Jameston all her martial arts skills; he loved studying things like kempō and Gōjū-ryū karate."

Picard perked. "Did you ever meet her?"

"Several times," Karis said, a blush crossing her pale cheeks. "One time, we even engaged in quite an intensive night of carnal congress . . . " - hearing _that_ made the veteran captain sputter in shock before he glared in mock-anger at her; the "Chef" (as Karis was called by many in honour of Chief Petty Officer Richard Sarstedt, the chef aboard Jonathan Archer's _Enterprise_ in the 2150s) loved to say outlandish things to catch people off-guard - " . . . just before she was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and assigned as commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Edmonton. Oh, this was in 2042. Sometime after the Bell Riots and just before the first phase of World War Three really heated up thanks to Phil Green and all his friends." At the captain's nod - the "first phase" of the Third World War between 2026 to 2053 was actually a series of minor regional conflicts that were later proven to have been instigated by the first generation of leaders in the Optimum Movement, which wouldn't make its "official" public appearance in Europe until 2055, two years after the Treaty of New York created the "new United Nations" and ended the nearly-three decade conflict - she then sighed as she moved to cap all the travel mugs. "When I focus my memories of the Borg through the meson in my bloodstream, I get the impression that they're . . . " A smirk. "Well, to borrow a phrase from Adrik Thorsen, they're not optimal."

The captain gaped. "You're serious!"

"Very," the senior chief petty officer said as she moved to prepare a carrying case for the drinks she had prepared. "Something tells me if any Borg nanoprobes get pumped into me, the meson might actually consider them a very tasty snack."

He paused as he considered that for a moment, and then his eyes widened. "_Mon Dieu_! I forgot! The Avalonians heal quickly from any wound because of the meson in their regenerative enzymes!" He then blinked before tapping his communicator. "Picard to Crusher. Beverly, do we have any samples of meson in medical stores?"

"About twenty cubic centimetres, Jean-Luc. Why?" the chief medical officer asked from her position in her main office in Sick Bay.

"Do you still have scans of the Avalonians from _Haida_ that we met two years ago?" Picard wondered. "Specifically their regenerative enzymes?"

A pause as the doctor considered that, and then she called back, "Yes, I do! It's in all standard medical files just in case there's another accident and one of the E.D.F. ships comes back into our dimension. Why are you asking, Jean-Luc?"

"Because Senior Chief Yahe has told me that she believes we could use the meson as a form of defence against Borg nanoprobes," Picard responded. "Can it be done?"

Another pause, and then Crusher hissed, "Jean-Luc, that's getting dangerously close to creating a _biological weapon_ if we use it offensively!"

"I can understand that. But what about _defensively_?" Picard wondered.

The doctor considered that, and then she said, "I'll look into it."

"As quick as you can, Beverly."

"Understood!"

The link was closed. "After hearing that, I would almost look upon you as more of a 'wolf' than a 'sheepdog,' Jean-Luc," Karis then advised as she gazed knowingly at him.

He grimaced. "Wolf" was the term Karis used to describe the more undisciplined officers in Section 31, the people who gladly broke all moral and social conventions at every opportunity to press their goals. "Sheepdog" was the term Karis used to describe people like herself and Fleet Admiral Shyrae, the people who comported themselves as the Federation's first true line of defence against the unorthodox threats. "With the Borg, we may have no choice but to all become wolves, Karis," Picard then said. "Then again, since most members of that race were forcibly assimilated into the Collective, perhaps the meson could be used to restore them to what they once were." A grim look then crossed his face as the memories of his being assimilated and transformed into Locutus flashed through his mind. "In effect, to liberate them all from the will of the Collective."

Karis hummed. "Good point . . . "

An intercom whistled. "Troi to Picard."

Picard tapped his communicator. "Go ahead, Counsellor."

"We just received a communiqué from Starfleet Command, sir," the counsellor stated. "Admiral Hayes' fleet has now engaged the Borg."

The captain nodded. "Understood. I'm on my way." He smirked as Karis handed him the carrying tray. "With some drinks for everyone there from the Chef."

Laughter echoed over the intercom . . .

_**To be continued . . .**_


	3. The Battle of Sector 001

U.S.S. _Cornwallis_ Ship's Log, Stardate 50893.9,_  
After a brief rendezvous with both the U.S.S. _Enterprise_ (Captain Jean-Luc Picard commanding) and the U.S.S. _Constellation_ (Captain Aya Nakajima commanding), _Cornwallis_ is now proceeding to Sector 001 to assist in a battle against a single Borg cube dispatched to assimilate Earth from the Unicomplex located in the Delta Quadrant.  
From what we can monitor now on Borg frequencies, it appears that the One - the controlling central nexus entity often addressed by those who know of it as the "Borg Queen" - may be directly in command of this cube as she proceeds to assimilate the races of the Federation and thus expand the Collective's influence over both Alpha and Beta Quadrants.  
Due to our inexperience in using our hyperwarp drive within the outer barrier limits of a galaxy, we are now 51.7 minutes away from interception._

* * *

The bridge . . .

"Jennifer, I have a distant contact on Lateral Sensor Eighteen."

Jennifer Archer blinked before she gazed on the junior grade lieutenant now manning the operations station. Lateral Sensor Eighteen was one of _Cornwallis_' very long range deep space sensor units, able to scan across the breadth of a whole galactic quadrant thanks to it being augmented to sense out the waves of tachytron radiation interacting between the "core" reality of this universe and such things like alternate timelines and pocket dimensions. "Report, Morganna," she bade.

Morganna Burke tapped a control. "Two contacts. Both appear to be Borg cubes. Proceeding on course . . . " Here, the lieutenant with the silver hair and dark grey eyes - she was seen as a descendant of the Third Diaspora, the group of humans that had migrated from Earth in the wake of the Post-Atomic Horror to seek out better worlds beyond what had been settled on the Moon, Mars, the Jovian moons and Titan (the worlds of the "First Diaspora") which were all settled during the period right up to First Contact with Vulcan in 2063, not to mention the Alpha Centauri worlds (the "Second Diaspora" colonies) that had been propelled forward thanks to the thinking of businessmen like Micah Brack from after First Contact to the end of World War Three - paused before she turned back to gaze on the _Cornwallis_' acting captain. "They're on course to intercept us, Jennifer."

"Looks like Queenie knows we're back," Marine Gunnery Sergeant Judith Montcalm - as _Cornwallis_ had been initially constructed as a Marine Corps support ship, it had only been right to ensure members of the Corps were aboard when she became the trials ship for the Galaxy-class; Montcalm was one of four Marines who had survived the ship's ill-fated voyage to the hearth world of the Fifth Unimatrix seventeen years ago - stated from the flight control station. "Do we stop, let them catch up, then blast them apart?"

"Just a moment," Burke said as she tapped controls, and then she hummed as a reading came up on her monitor board. "By the looks of it, they'll be in range to intercept us in one hour and nineteen minutes. When we're over Earth."

The acting commander of the last active Stadacona-class ship took a deep breath; even if her body didn't really need large amounts of oxygen to allow her internal systems to operate properly, the sentients of the Fifth Unimatrix had ensured that her body would still be able to fully respond to her conscious control just as it had once done when she was a fully organic normal human from New York City. It was bad enough that they had a cube to deal with that was threatening to assimilate all of Earth. Dealing with that - even if _Cornwallis_ was powerful enough to dispatch it - was going to be difficult enough; in the fifteen years the former troop transport had sailed around the local cluster of galaxies, the sixty-two people aboard her hadn't really encountered any truly hostile races necessitating they brush up on their ship-fighting skills.

But _three_ cubes . . .?

"Maybe it's time we tried an in-galaxy jump."

People gazed on her. "Jen, it will require a level of precision that we have never allowed ourselves to pursue before," T'Cel noted. "Even if we can do it . . . "

"We can't leave our friends to fight one cube by themselves when we've got two more of those things coming in within the hour, T'Cel," Dianna Neilson objected from her place at Jennifer's other side.

Archer sighed. "Lynn?"

«Yes, Jennifer?» the voice of the chief engineer echoed in everyone's mind; everyone's ability to link with the _Cornwallis_' own computers and each other worked far faster and more efficiently than any standard on-board internal communications system.

"How fast can you calculate a short hyperwarp jump between here and Earth?"

«Two-point-nine-minutes.»

"Go! When ready, execute! Anya, hail the _Enterprise_."

"Channel open," Marine Corporal Anya Patsayeva called out from the tactical station located behind and above the central chairs.

The forward view screen melted into the image of the main bridge of the starship now light-years ahead of _Cornwallis_. "What is it, Commander?" Jean-Luc Picard asked.

"Captain, we're picking up two additional cubes now approaching us from aft," Archer stated. "They'll intercept us in seventy-eight minutes. When we're in orbit over Earth. Seeing as how we'll be busy with one cube already there, I'm going to try to do a controlled hyperwarp jump into the Sol system near Uranus. If we plan it right, we'll be there right about the same time you and _Constellation_ arrive."

"You've never done that before," he advised her.

"Well, we need to do it now," she stated as she gave him a wry smile.

He considered that for a moment, and then he nodded in understanding. "We'll see you there. _Enterprise_ out."

"_Cornwallis_ out."

* * *

Meanwhile, near Jupiter . . .

"_Iron Duke_ to _Endeavour_. Stand by to engage at Grid A-15!"

"_Defiant_ and _Bozeman_. Fall back to Mobile Position One!"

"Acknowledged, _Duke_!"

Hearing that barked reply from Morgan Bateson, Worf could only grimace as he called out, "Acknowledged, _Iron Duke_! Falling back to Mobile Position One!"

"There, Commander!" _Defiant_'s current flight controller, Lieutenant Corrine Kizilbash, called out as she pointed at the main view screen. "I see it!"

"Confirmed, Commander," the tactical officer of the escort ship, Lieutenant Gregory Tutu, stated from his post. "We have the target in visual range."

Worf looked . . .

. . . and then he scowled as he watched the oncoming cube - one of its ninety-degree angles pointing in the direction it wished to sail - grow larger on the view screen. "Stand by on phasers and quantum torpedoes, Mister Tutu," the strategic operations officer of Deep Space Nine then ordered. "We will be in it soon."

"Aye, sir!" the native of Pretoria said with a grin as he keyed controls.

"Commander, the Borg are signalling," the sensory officer, Ensign Sito Jaxa - who had been captured by the Cardassians when she had tried to escort a dissident named Joret Dal back to his homeworld, then had been exchanged the previous year thanks to arrangements made by a friend of Wesley Crusher's in the Obsidian Order, Jeina Tahn - then declared as she gazed up at her former superior officer from the _Enterprise_.

"I assume it is their normal message," the Klingon mused, the disgust he felt about the cybernetic race quite plain for all to sense.

A nod; Sito had still been at Starfleet Academy when the Battle of Wolf 359 had gone down, but she had heard all the stories. "Yes, sir."

"Do not play it. These creatures do not deserve such respect."

"Yes, sir," she said with a nasty grin, and then she perked. "Sir, I'm picking up two starship ID beacons approaching in on course 008 mark 355!" Tapping a control to confirm what was coming in, she then gaped, spinning around to stare wide-eyed at the commander. "Sir, it's the _Enterprise_ and the _Constellation_!"

Worf's head snapped over, and then he barked, "On screen!"

Kizilbash tapped controls to show the oncoming shapes of two Sovereign-class ships now coming in hard, both maintaining ten kilometres distance from each other as they seemed to dive like hunting falcons towards the Borg cube. "He DID come!" Worf then said on seeing the name and registry number of the ship on the right of the screen, and then he gazed on _Enterprise_'s sistership, whose captain had a reputation that was nearly the equal of both James T. Kirk's and Jean-Luc Picard's. "And he brought HER with him! Truly, today will be ours!"

Sito then perked as a new message flashed on her control board. "Commander, _Iron Duke_ is signalling _Enterprise_ and _Constellation_!" she said.

"On speakers!" Worf barked.

" . . . I ordered you two to stay away from this mission!" the irate voice of one Vice-Admiral Jeremiah Hayes snapped from the bridge of the U.S.S. _Iron Duke_, a late-model Excelsior-class ship - which had been named after a famous line of British warships, including the flagship of the British Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 - which was now serving as the Task Force flagship.

"The orders were countermanded by Fleet Admiral Shyrae, Admiral Hayes," the calm voice of Jean-Luc Picard replied from his own bridge. "And we're not alone, either!"

"Fleet Admiral . . . who?" a confused Sito asked.

"One of the Undying Ones, Jaxa," Worf quietly stated as he gazed at her.

The Bajoran's eyes went wide on hearing that; Bajorans - like Klingons - in the know about _them_ also used that particular phrase. "One of the _Undying Ones_? And she's a _fleet admiral_?" she nearly squeaked out.

"I will explain later," the Klingon promised her.

She considered that, and then she shakily nodded. "What do you mean you're not alone, Jean-Luc?" Morgan Bateson called from his ship as the Borg cube seemed to slow down, still several hundred kilometres away from the massed fleet of over thirty Federation starships awaiting it.

"A lost ship that's been missing for seventeen years just came back to Federation space earlier today, Morgan," Picard stated. "I doubt you would have heard of this vessel since you came to our century: the U.S.S. _Cornwallis_."

People on the _Defiant_'s bridge perked on hearing that. "_Cornwallis_?" Tutu demanded. "That's a troopship! We don't need a brigade of Marines here!"

"Unless they want to try a boarding action," Kizilbash quipped.

Worf himself blinked in confusion as he recalled what he knew of that old ship. "_Cornwallis_, before she vanished, was modified to test out the systems - including both weapons and defensive systems - that were later fitted on the Galaxy-class ships, Lieutenant," he then declared as he gazed on the flight controller from the Kurdish city of Mahabad. "If the ship is intact and still able to fight . . . "

"Commander! I'm picking up an odd burst of radiation from the area of Uranus!"

The commander's head snapped over. "Identify!" he barked.

Sito's fingers flew over her controls, and then she blinked. "Tachytron radiation?" she demanded, a touch of confusion in her voice. "Sir, what . . .?"

The Klingon perked on hearing those words. _Tachytron radiation?_ His dark eyes then widened as he recalled when he had first encountered that term. _An interdimensional breach! That's the energy the Canadian _Haida_ uses to power her warp drive! Could the t__ō__shi under Director Moroboshi be coming here to fight the Borg . . .?_

"_**You will not be protected by the ship converted by the Fifth Unimatrix**_."

Everyone blinked on hearing that many-in-one voice that marked the whole of the Borg Collective - or, at least, one ship's full of them - speaking to them at once. "'Fifth Unimatrix?'" Tutu demanded, confusion rampant over his nearly-black face. "What do they mean by that?"

"_**Resistance is futile. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture . . . **_"

A garbled fanfare of ear-splitting screeches then cut in to wipe out that voice. "They're being JAMMED!" Kizilbash cried out as she gazed wide-eyed at her mission commander, the look etched there screaming out, _Is that even POSSIBLE?_

"Commander!" Sito called out. "Sensors are now registering some sort of spacial-temporal breach now forming on the interior side of Uranus' orbital path! It appears a ship of some sort is trying to emerge from somewhere!"

"Can you scan the vessel type?" Worf demanded.

"Scanning!"

The screeching sound - which had been piped down by Sito to ensure the bridge crew wouldn't be distracted too much by that noise - then vanished. "_**We are the Borg. Resistance is futile. The ship converted by the Fifth Unimatrix will not . . . **_"

More screeching cut off that voice. "Someone doesn't really like the Borg," Tutu then noted, which made all the people on the _Defiant_'s bridge laugh.

"Well, they do need a better way of announcing themselves," Kizilbash noted.

"Indeed," Worf flatly declared, though this time, he could sense the humour in his subordinates' words. "Status of the spacial-temporal breach scan, Ensign?"

"I've detected a single vessel about to emerge into our spacial reality, Commander," Sito stated as she tried to increase the sensitivity of _Defiant_'s scanners, wishing they were the standard multi-purpose scanning units that she had used on the old _Enterprise_. As powerful as their little ship was, _Defiant_ didn't have anything akin to the remarkable sophistication that the old _Enterprise_ possessed. "She looks Federation . . . " Her jaw then dropped as a clear reading of the approaching ship came up on her monitor screen. "Stadacona-class . . .?"

"_Cornwallis_ . . . " Tutu whispered.

"On screen!" Worf demanded.

Sito keyed a control, and then the people there watched . . .

* * *

The _Enterprise_ . . .

"_Cornwallis_ has successfully emerged from the spacial-temporal breach she has created, Captain," Data stated as he keyed controls at his station. "Her shields are raised and her weapons are armed; she is now on an attack course taking her towards the Borg vessel. Tachytron intake tanks now only register at thirty-two percent capacity."

"How long will it take the tanks to gain enough energy so she could employ her accelerator cannon, Mister Data?" Picard demanded as everyone on the bridge watched the giant troopship - now moving at quite a fast speed for something that big - surge towards the Borg ship, passing between both _Enterprise_ and _Constellation_. "We have two other Borg ships to worry about in an hour or so."

"Minimal energy capacity in the tanks required to fire the cannon is thirty percent, Captain," the android answered. "However, Commander Archer and her crew have trained themselves to not use the weapon unless the intake tanks are at **_sixty-five_** percent capacity to ensure they don't lose critical power in a circumstance . . . "

"Where they're about to be overwhelmed," Riker finished.

"Indeed, Commander. At present intake rate, _Cornwallis_ will be at optimal capacity to engage the accelerator cannon under that standard within twenty-seven minutes," Data stated.

"Then let's make sure she can gain that time. _Enterprise_ to _Constellation_," Picard called out. "Aya, we need to give the _Cornwallis_ time to build enough energy so she could make use of that cannon of hers. We'll go left, you go right!"

"We're moving, Jean-Luc!" Aya Nakajima called back.

"Is this party private or can we join in?" a familiar man's voice asked.

Picard laughed. "You're more than welcome to join us, Morgan!"

"We'll take her in the rear!" Morgan Bateson declared.

"Understood!"

And with that, three Sovereign-class ships lunged onto their target . . .

* * *

The _Defiant_ . . .

"Look at them go!" Tutu cried out.

Worf watched . . .

. . . and then he roared with approval as phasers lanced out from three directions to rip into the Borg cube, shearing past the giant ship's defensive shields to tear considerable-sized chunks out of the outer hull and expose the more vulnerable systems underneath. "They will not fight alone!" the Klingon snarled. "Corrine, fall us in beside _Enterprise_; we will protect them! Gregory, lock phasers on target!"

"Aye, sir!" both lieutenants chanted out as _Defiant_ leapt forward . . .

* * *

The _Constellation_ . . .

"_Defiant_'s moving in to flank _Enterprise_, Captain!" Henry Schwartz stated.

"Good!" Aya called out. "_Constellation_ to all other ships! If you want to join the fun, now's the time! We need to keep this boy busy before Jen Archer can fire off that big firecracker on her upper hull to render this thing stardust!"

"We heard that, Aya!" Captain H'jar sh'Raazn of the _Budapest_ called out. "We'll fall in on your port side! There's a party after this is all over with?"

"You bet your damn life, you sexy ice-devil you!" Aya whooped.

The Andorian captain - he had been two years ahead of Aya Nakajima at the Academy and both had dated on occasion during their rise to the command chairs of their ships - laughed. "Invite us in, Aya-chan!" Captain Tomoko Kodama of the _Yeager_ added. "I've got your starboard flank! Let's make a pass of this oversized garbage scow!"

As the arrowhead formation of three ships - a Sovereign-class heavy explorer in the lead, a Sabre-class destroyer to her right and a Norway-class cruiser to her left - swooped down, the Borg cube opened up with both tractor arrays and neutron beams to catch all three ships as they got close, then either destroy them or disable them to allow a boarding to occur. However, a quick burst of phaser fire from _Budapest_ blew apart the tractor array moving to snare them, then a triple-shot of quantum torpedoes from _Constellation_ and standard photon torpedoes from _Yeager_ blew apart a two-hundred metre wide hole in the outer hull, drilling well over a hundred metres into the cube's interior. "Damn!" Schwartz breathed out. "The new weapons are working!"

"Don't get cocky, Henry!" Aya snarled as the three starships got clear and commenced Immelmann turns to make another pass. "They can adopt! We can't give them the chance to analyse and defend themselves against our weapons!"

"Aye, ma'am!"

* * *

The _Enterprise_ . . .

"We're hurting them!" Riker stated.

The second of three Sovereign-class ships present today and the prototype of the Defiant-class ships had been joined by the Ambassador-class U.S.S. _Excalibur_ on their own runs against the cube. "Maintain shield and weapons modulations, continue firing!" Picard stated. "Lieutenant Moonstar, keep an eye out in case the vessel appears to be either moving to self-destruct or else try to eject a smaller ship from one side of the hull."

"Aye, sir!" Charlene Moonstar stated as she keyed weapons and tactical sensor controls.

"You recognise that type of ship, sir?" Riker asked.

"Yes!" Picard hissed out, and then he pointed. "Look there!"

Everyone looked, and then they gaped on seeing a circular depression near the middle of one of the cube's sides. "A hangar deck?" Troi asked.

"Yes! That means the One is here."

Eyes locked on Picard. "'The One,' sir?" the ship's current flight controller, Lieutenant Sean Hawk, asked as he turned around briefly to gaze on the captain.

"In effect, she is the central consciousness of the Collective, Lieutenant Hawk," Picard stated. "The Collective's 'queen' in a way." His eyes then narrowed. "Odd . . . "

"Captain?" Troi asked as she reached over to grasp his arm.

He blinked, and then shook her head. "I can't hear them, Deanna . . . " he whispered.

Both Troi and Riker exchanged worried looks . . .

* * *

_Cornwallis_ . . .

"They've definitely improved weapons capabilities over the years."

Jennifer Archer nodded as her eyes took in the brutal, almost one-way battle between the lone cube ship and the small fleet of Federation vessels moving to stop it from advancing further towards Earth. As ships teamed up into attack flights to join in and unleash damage on their target, _Cornwallis_ had come to a halt about two thousand kilometres away from the Borg ship, hovering there as the other vessels of the fleet launched multiple strafing runs on the invading cube. "Yes, they have . . . " she breathed out. "But haven't you noticed something, everyone?"

The others looked. "They're not fighting at full power," Morganna Burke then noted.

"It is more than that, Morganna," T'Cel warned. "This is not just their holding back to analyse the attacks so they could prepare effective counter-measures."

Silence fell as they considered that, and then Judith Montcalm gaped. "That's a sacrificial lamb, Jen!" she said as she gazed back on the commander.

"For what?" Dianna Neilson asked.

"Those two other cubes coming in behind us?" Anya Patsayeva wondered.

"Maybe. But we don't have time to consider that," Archer said. "Anya, open a channel to the whole fleet. We're getting involved in this."

"Channel open," the corporal said after tapping a control.

"This is Commander Archer on _Cornwallis_," Archer declared. "We're coming in. Give us some manoeuvring room and stay clear of our weapons arcs." She gazed on the gunnery sergeant at the flight control station. "Judy, if you don't mind?"

"Aye-aye, Commander. Moving in, one-half impulse," Montcalm said as she tapped controls.

The former troop transport began to move towards the cube. As the _Cornwallis_ advanced, the Borg ship seemed to pull away from her in the general direction of Earth, ignoring the large number of Federation ships hammering away at her hull from all sides as she tried to keep her distance from the last of the Stadaconas. "Scanning the interior of the Borg ship now," Burke stated. "It appears there's a smaller vessel with unusual equipment contained in the heart of the cube."

The acting commanding officer of the _Cornwallis_ exchanged a look with the gunnery sergeant at flight control. "Sacrificial lamb, Judy. You called it right," Archer said. "Phasers?"

"Primary hull dorsal and ventral arrays charged and at the ready," Patsayeva declared. "Specific target, Jennifer?"

"Start drilling. Go after that vessel within the cube, Anya. Fire at will."

"Firing."

* * *

_Enterprise_ . . .

"_Mon Dieu_ . . .!"

As the bridge crew watched in awe, _Cornwallis_' upper and lower primary hull phaser arrays - set up in the same general locations as what had been mounted on the primary hull of the _Enterprise_-D - spat out sizzling beams of energy to rip into the centre of the Borg ship, gutting out large sections of that side of the ship, almost penetrating all the way to very core of the invading vessel from the Delta Quadrant. "Looks like we won't need that cannon of theirs after all if they can do THAT!" Riker noted as several ships of the fleet, including the _Iron Duke_, moved in on either flank of the giant troop transport as she continued to tear away at the target, the other ships gladly joining in with their own weapons.

Picard nodded, and then he tensed as something started chanting in his mind:

_**. . . damage to primary power cores at sector one-one-zero. All drones move to commence repair. Initiate launch of temporal probe to continue mission . . .**_

"Sir?" Troi's voice broke through the Collective's voices.

Picard grimaced. "Mister Hawk, take us around the Borg ship and position us close to where that hangar deck is! They'll be launching a probe of some sort towards Earth! As quick as you can, Sean! We have to be in position to stop it before it gets there!"

"Aye, sir!" the Martian-born lieutenant said as he tapped controls.

_Enterprise_ - which had been the farthest away of the Federation ships from the Borg cube - did a sweeping starboard turn for another run, and then leapt forward, surging away from both _Excalibur_ and _Defiant_ as she plunged back towards the cube. "Worf to _Enterprise_! Captain, what is happening?" the voice of a very familiar Klingon then barked over the open communications circuits.

"Follow us, Mister Worf!" Picard called out. "They'll be launching a probe at any time now and we need to destroy it before it gets clear!"

"Acknowledged!" the Klingon barked back with his usual no-nonsense voice. Orders had been given; the questions could wait until later.

"Jean-Luc, we'll stay back and protect _Cornwallis_," Captain Morgan Korsmo then called over from the _Excalibur_. "Our sensors are picking up the power drain on that ship. She's still got a lot of energy reserves left, but if there are more of these damned things coming . . .!"

"We have two more cubes coming within the hour, Morgan!" Picard said. "_Cornwallis_ MUST be protected so she can destroy those cubes!"

"We overheard that, Jean-Luc," Morgan Bateson called over from _Bozeman_. "Our sensors are picking up something from the one we're dealing with . . . "

"Captain, the Borg ship is launching a probe!" Data called out.

Picard turned to look . . .

. . . and then he cursed as he watched the roughly spherical-shaped vessel leap away - almost as if it had been shot out of an old cannon! - from the damaged cube, moving to get as far away from the attacking starships as it could move. "After that probe, Mister Hawk! Full impulse power!" the captain barked.

_Enterprise_ - with _Defiant_ right beside her - surged on ahead . . .

* * *

_Cornwallis_ . . .

"I'm starting to detect chroniton particles emanating from the probe, Jen!" Burke warned. "That thing's trying to do a time-warp!"

Archer paled. With the amount of tachytron radiation that had been pumped out by _Cornwallis_ as she moved to return to her normal dimension of operations, any sort of temporal rift would unleash a violently unstable spacial distortion that could destroy anything caught in it. "Tachytron bubble! Form it around all the ships! Now!"

«DONE!» Lynn Barry called up from engineering.

"_Enterprise_ and _Defiant_ won't be protected!" Montcalm warned.

"I'll go to the _Enterprise_!" Neilson barked out. "Someone get to the _Defiant_!"

After several millisecond's concentration, a transporter beam took her away. "I'll take care of the _Defiant_!" Burke said before she concentrated, then disappeared from view.

"_Iron Duke_ to _Cornwallis_! What are you doing?" Admiral Hayes called over. "What's with this energy bubble you're producing?"

"Admiral Hayes, keep your vessel close by to us!" Archer stated. "_Cornwallis_ to all ships! The Borg vessel has launched a temporal probe! Any contact between tachytron radiation and chroniton particles will create a massive spacial distortion which - among other things! - will cause your warp cores to automatically breach and destroy your ships! Stay where you are; do not go beyond thirty kilometres away from the _Cornwallis_!"

"What about Jean-Luc and his friends, Jennifer?" Aya Nakajima demanded.

"Dianna Neilson and Morganna Burke just beamed over to modulate their shields and make sure they go into that temporal breach, Aya!" Archer called back. "Relax and hang onto something tight, people; we've been through this before during our own voyages! We'll be hit by gravimetric waves that'll upset all your ships' inertia dampeners! It'll pass as soon as the temporal rift is fully closed off!"

"All ships are acknowledging, Jen," Patsayeva called out.

"Good!" the acting commander of the last active Stadacona said before she closed her eyes and concentrated. «Di! Morgan! Go autonomous before you fall into that temporal rift that thing's going to be making!» she called out . . .

* * *

_Enterprise_ . . .

"What are you doing here, Lieutenant Neilson?"

"Trying to save your ship, Captain!" Neilson said as she tapped controls at the tactical station, ignoring a wide-eyed Charlene Moonstar as she modulated the shields to block off the oncoming waves of tachytron energy passing through the _Enterprise_'s hull. "Chronitons and tachytron radiation don't mix! It'll create a spacial distortion which will make your warp core breach and turn your ship into atoms!"

"What should we do?" Riker demanded, quite shocked that someone from _Cornwallis_ had been able to breach the shields surrounding _Enterprise_ with such ease.

"Steer into whatever temporal breach that thing is going to make!" Neilson said as she nodded to the main view screen, now showing the Borg probe pulling away from the two Federation starships now pursuing it. "We can't warp out of range in time!"

"Do it, Mister Hawk!" Picard barked.

"Aye, sir!"

"Incoming spacial distortion!" Data called out. "Bearing 040 mark 179!"

"All hands, brace for shock impact!" Picard barked.

_Enterprise_ then bucked hard under the waves of warped space hammering into her stern from the area of Jupiter, that nearly knocking everyone off their feet or out of their chairs. "Captain, look!" Troi then warned, pointing.

Eyes turned forward . . .

"EARTH!" Hawk gasped.

And it was one of the founding worlds of the Federation, now being approached by the small Borg probe, which was cloaking itself in nearly invisible waves of energy; right now, all three ships were still millions of kilometres away from assuming orbit over Earth, though they were quickly closing the range. "Can we target phasers or torpedoes?" Picard demanded.

"We could, Captain," Neilson warned. "But if we allow the temporal vortex that thing is making to not close off automatically, the spacial distortions caused by the chronitons reacting badly to the tachytron radiation from _Cornwallis_ could easily damage Earth itself, to say anything about totally destroying the Moon!"

"Temporal vortex is now fully formed, Captain!" Data warned.

Everyone blinked as the shifting and heaving of the decks under their feet stopped. As the Borg probe plunged through the vortex into the past, people then watched as the various orbital constructs around Earth - to say anything of the domed cities visible on the surface of the Moon - vanished. Even more so, the distant jewel of the Earth lost all its colours, turning into a uniform grey pierced only by the familiar shapes of the seas. "What happened to the Earth?" Troi demanded.

"They've probably gone back to change something in history!" Carol Kirk then declared from her station. "Earth looks like it's . . . "

"Been assimilated by the Borg," Picard finished for the cadet. "Lieutenant Neilson, can you explain why we're not being affected by this?"

Silence.

"Lieutenant . . .?" Picard said as he turned around . . .

. . . and then stopped on seeing Dianna Neilson totally FROZEN in place, her eyes wide with surprise and her mouth slightly open as if she was about to say something. "What the hell?" Riker demanded. "Alyssa!"

Alyssa Greene turned and concentrated on the statue-still officer from the _Cornwallis_, and then she shook her head. "It's like she's gone into some sort of stand-by mode, Will. Like Data feels to me whenever he's deactivated. I can't sense her thoughts."

"She's probably bound to the _Cornwallis_ herself, Captain," Troi then said. "When we passed fully into the temporal vortex, she was cut off from the ship and all her friends."

"Sir, contact with the vortex gate is fifteen seconds away if we maintain course!" Hawk warned.

Picard gritted his teeth. "_Enterprise_ to _Defiant_! Worf, are you there?"

"Yes, sir! Sir, this lieutenant . . .!"

"Never mind! I'll explain about her later! Follow us into that temporal vortex, Commander!" the captain cut him off. "Mister Hawk, take us through the vortex, full speed ahead! Master Chief Petty Officer Hilton, report to the bridge immediately!"

"Aye, sir!" many voices chanted out as the _Enterprise_ plunged through the vortex back in time, the _Defiant_ rushing in right after her . . .

* * *

Near Earth, another time . . .

"We made it!" Sito Jaxa gasped.

"_Qapla'!_" Worf cried out in triumph as both the _Defiant_ and the _Enterprise_ sailed clear of the breach in space, still several million kilometres away from Earth, with the Moon in a noticeably different position concerning its mother planet than what the Starfleet personnel had seen just a minute before. "Do we have sensors, Ensign? We need to scan around for that Borg probe!"

"They're down, but not damaged. Moving to re-modulate scanners . . . er, now!" Sito said as she tried not to stop and stare at the frozen officer in the old-style uniform standing nearby, appearing as if she was looming over the ensign's station. "Um . . . hello?" she said as she moved to wave a hand over the unmoving Morganna Burke's face. "Hello?"

Worf turned to watch the ensign try to attract the frozen lieutenant's attention, and then he tapped his communications badge. "Worf to Bashir!"

"Yes, Commander?" Doctor (Lieutenant) Julian Bashir called up from the _Defiant_'s small medical station near the centre of the ship. "Any casualties?"

"Negative, but we have a visitor on the bridge that is frozen completely still for some reason. She is a Starfleet officer in an old duty uniform; I believe she is one of the surviving crew of the U.S.S. _Cornwallis_, which returned to the Federation just now."

Silence.

"On my way up, Worf!" Bashir called out.

"Appreciated," Worf said. "Worf to _Enterprise_."

"_Enterprise_, Picard here."

"Captain, can you explain what happened with this lieutenant that just beamed aboard the _Defiant_? As soon as she came aboard, she moved to modulate our shields . . . and when we passed into the vortex, she became as stiff as a statue."

"As you might have guessed, Mister Worf, she's one of the officers from the _Cornwallis_. When they vanished seventeen years ago, they fell through a highly radioactive wormhole that took them to the home world of 'living machines' the old NASA Voyager Six probe encountered nearly four centuries ago," Picard explained as the door to the bridge opened to reveal the chief medical officer of Deep Space Nine, medical kit slung over his shoulder and a tricorder in hand. "Sixty-two of the ship's crew barely survived that trip, but they were all dying of radiation poisoning. The sentients of that world - thanks very much to the sacrifice of both Captain Willard Decker and Lieutenant Ilia when Captain Kirk's _Enterprise_ encountered V'Ger a century ago - felt they simply had no choice but to transform them into Questor-like synthezoids, all of them similar to the 'Ilia-probe' that went about that _Enterprise_ in the encounter with V'Ger."

"I overheard that, Captain Picard. And her body's internal structure matches that of the readings Admiral McCoy took of the Ilia-probe when she was aboard that _Enterprise_," Bashir said as he moved to scan the frozen woman. "Let's see if she has a reboot switch . . . oh, my God!"

Worf gazed on him. "Doctor?"

The raven-haired, brown-eyed Terran man was gaping in wide-eyed shock at the silver-haired woman with the dark grey eyes. "Morganna . . .?" he gasped.

"Is that Lieutenant Burke, Doctor Bashir?" Picard called over from _Enterprise_.

The doctor blinked as his mind nearly crashed from the shock of encountering a dear old friend alive and well in this place and time, and then he nodded. "Yes, Captain. It is Morganna Burke. I'm moving to analyse her internal mechanisms now." He then drew out his tricorder, and then began to make a detailed scan of the frozen woman before him . . .

* * *

_Enterprise_ . . .

"I think I'm feeling the presence of a boot-up program inside her that could get her operating fully again. I'll see if I can try to activate it."

"Don't try to hurt her too much, Master Chief."

"Aye, sir."

People were gathered around the frozen Dianna Neilson as a concentrating Heather Hilton kept one hand hovering over the lieutenant's face. Monitoring this was Beverly Crusher, who came to the bridge at Deanna Troi's call to assist in restoring Neilson. "Her body functions are still active, but in a very reduced state of energy output than what I scanned in both Commander Archer and Lieutenant Barry when we were aboard the _Cornwallis_, Jean-Luc," the doctor said as she gazed on the captain, who was standing close by. "Most likely . . . "

A surprised gasp then escaped Neilson as she jerked to attention for a moment, and then she nearly slumped down on the tactical control board; fortunately for her, Charlene Moonstar had locked out the controls just in case the transformed synthetic Terran astrophysicist tapped something that might cause problems. A second later, the young-looking lieutenant looked curiously around. "What happened?" she asked.

Hilton breathed out. "You went into some sort of stand-by mode, Lieutenant," she explained, making Neilson gaze in confusion at her. "Didn't you know you were linked to all your friends on the _Cornwallis_ before you beamed aboard here?"

Neilson blinked several times, and then she moaned. "Oh, I'm an idiot!" she spat out, slapping the side of her head; seeing her do that made all the people watching this either smirk or laugh. "I forgot to shift myself fully into autonomous mode when I saw that temporal vortex start to form in front of that . . . " Her voice then trailed off, and then she gasped. "The Borg! They must be trying to start something in the past!"

Instantly, Data was moving to commence a scan. "Confirmed! The Borg probe is now in high orbit over Earth, directly over North America!" He then paused. "The probe is now firing onto the surface of the planet! Somewhere in Montana . . . "

The whole bridge crew jolted, many of the people who had been aboard the old _Enterprise_ when the data-stream "ghost" of one Adrik Thorsen has possessed the ship's operations officer then paling as they remembered one thing about that particular American state. "Mister Hawk, intercept course!" Picard barked out. "Lieutenant Moonstar, prepare quantum torpedoes!"

"Aye, sir!" both of them barked out.

As Alyssa passed on a warning signal to the _Defiant_ informing the crew there of what was happening, _Enterprise_ surged forward, racing past the orbit line of the Moon as her tracking sensors locked in on the probe-like ship now in high orbit over the triangular mass of North America, sending down a barrage of shots towards the surface. "We are locked on target, Captain. Torpedoes ready!" Charlene called out.

"Fire!" Picard snapped.

The green firing toggle was tapped. Instantly, a half-dozen of the bright missiles leapt out, covering the thousands of kilometres separating the Federation starship from her target in the proverbial blink of an eye. As the bridge crew watched with both relief and dread, the probe was instantly gutted by the exploding weapons, the fragments of its hull instantly rendered into space dust from the mixed matter/anti-matter charges in the torpedo warheads. "Target destroyed, Captain!" Charlene then said, and then she tapped controls. "Moving to scan the area on the surface where the probe fired upon. Sensors aren't fully active, but I'll try to get something out of them."

"What year is this, anyway?" Riker demanded.

"I'm trying to listen in to local communications messages to ascertain that, Will. Give me a moment, please."

People gazed back on Alyssa Greene as she tapped controls at her station. After a moment, the young Phaëton engineering officer blinked. "Oh, no . . . "

"What is it, Alyssa?" Picard asked, a sense of dread filling his heart. _Montana . . . we're back in time . . . _Mon Dieu_, don't let it be THAT . . .!_

She gazed on him. "Sir, I'm picking up an automated time signal from the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa," Alyssa reported. "It's Wednesday, the fourth of April, the year 2063. Current time is 0537 hours Eastern Daylight Time."

Stunned silence fell over the bridge. At her station, Carol Kirk blinked as her hand slipped into her jacket pocket to feel the ball of meson she had been given almost two years before in the medical station of a Canadian starship from another dimension. She then jolted on hearing Will Riker state, "It's easy to guess now what's going on, Captain. They're here to stop First Contact."

"Agreed," Picard stated, his voice now hollow as he considered the ugly implications of what could happen if the historic event scheduled for tomorrow evening DIDN'T happen. "Over ten years since the first phase of World War Three ended. The Optimum Movement growing in power and gaining influence in the New United Nations and locally at the time . . . while too many people are just trying to survive day after day with nations all over the planet practically without working governments or other forms of support. No sense of real hope; a perfectly fertile ground for the Optimum . . . and after tomorrow evening, the Icarian Movement as well." He gazed on Alyssa, Charlene and Heather on saying that, which made all three Phaëtons smile in acknowledgement of how different their ancestors were from people like Phillip Green. "So many dead so far . . . and much worse still to come in the next sixteen years . . . " He then grimaced; after the old _Enterprise_'s encounter with Adrik Thorsen seven years before over TNC-65813, many of the crew, including Picard, had brushed up on their knowledge of the history of this particular time. "Scan the surface around the site of where the _Phoenix_ might be, Data. It's an old American Air Force missile silo near Bozeman. I assume that's where the Borg were firing upon before we destroyed them."

"Aye, sir," the android said . . .

* * *

Many decks below . . .

The One could only smile as she gazed around the darkened corridor of the Federation starship where she and her drones had been able to board within seconds before their probe ship had been destroyed by _Enterprise_'s quantum torpedoes. Already, several of the drones had been able to capture and assimilate members of the crew who were quartered down here, putting them into newly-erected alcoves so they could be properly transformed into productive members of the Collective. Glad to be once again using her full body, which had been reassembled as soon as they had come aboard _Enterprise_, the One took a moment to better analyse what had just been brought into the Collective for the current mission to take over the starship, then push forward to conquer both the homeworld of Species 5618 (the natives of Earth) and Species 3259 (the Vulcans), thus ensure the United Federation of Planets would never exist in the future.

Noting that most of those who had already been captured were young females of Species 6114 - "Phaëtons" as they called themselves; they were an off-shoot of Species 5618 that had developed quite impressive mind-based powers thanks to the unique environment of their current home planet - the One could only smirk.

It was only a matter of time now.

"Oh, MY . . .!"

She tensed on hearing that surprised shout, and then she turned . . .

. . . only to watch as Six of Seven quickly came up to snare another young woman, she immediately pressing a pair of assimilation tubules right into the victim's neck and delivering the necessary injection of nanoprobes into her blood stream to begin the physical process of transforming her into another drone of the Collective. Quickly linking into that new drone, the One was quick to realise she was a member of Species 1402 - the El-Aurians, whom the Collective had effectively eliminated nearly an Earth-century ago - and that she was a vital authoritative link between the captain of this vessel and the secret Federation intelligence group known as "Section 31."

_Ah, Locutus . . . you will not escape me, escape Us, for much longer . . ._

As she allowed the link with the newly-programmed drone that was once a woman named Karis Yahe to fade, the One turned to head towards the hatchway leading up into the lower levels of the main engineering section just a deck above her head. It was time to ensure none could interfere with the Collective.

Especially the one member of Race Zero here.

_She will watch as all her friends will be made no more . . ._

_**To be continued . . .**_


	4. The Dark Lady of the Great White North

Near Bozeman, Montana, 3:34 AM Mountain Daylight Time . . .

"So are you SURE she's going be here, Lily?"

Hearing the slightly-slurred question from her current companion, Lily Sloane tried not to sigh too much. It was bad enough that what passed for alcohol in this part of the world was probably powerful enough to eat away your insides . . . but when your partner in trying to totally turn the Einstein world of physics upside-down and inside-out was forced to use the local rotgut to help keep his bipolar problems under control, it made a person wish for the more happy times of youth, when the United States of America was still effectively a united country and a place where one could live in peace and relative safety. _Or, maybe better, go north and live in Canada!_ the native of Tulsa mused as she tried to keep Zefram Cochrane on his feet as they headed from the Crash and Burn towards their private quarters in the shantytown they had set up near an old Air Force Titan II missile silo that had once been controlled from Malmstrom Air Force Base just outside Great Falls. _They've never had to deal with dirty nukes ripping their cities apart!_

"She'll BE here, Zee!" the dark-skinned woman with the slightly radioactive-tinged reddish-black hair and the dark brown eyes assured her companion. "Honestly! In all the years we've known that woman, has she EVER stood us up at all?"

"Nah!" Cochrane said before he took the half-empty bottle of his beloved Jack Daniels and drank deeply from it. "Girl's got a computer for a brain . . . and a body straight out of _Westworld_!" A laugh. "'Sides, she has to keep an eye out for me!"

"Why's that?" Sloane asked, somewhat dreading the answer.

"'Cause Miss LEFT-tenant-Colonel Ma'am Glorianna Theresa Roy Jameston can't get goddamned DRUNK! So **_I_** do her drinkin' for her!" the prematurely-aged scientist with the greying dirty blond hair and the deep blue eyes said with a laugh, and then he seemed to sober up for a moment as he gazed out into the starry night overhead. "Damn! That is just a cryin' shame, Lily! How does she live like that?"

She blinked. "Who? Roy?"

"Yeah, Roy," Cochrane said before taking another swig of his whiskey. "She was given the power to turn herself into a . . . a . . . " He blinked before he gazed with a dazed look at Sloane. "What did she call herself again?"

"Questor."

"Right! Right! Questor!" A shake of the head. "She didn't have to do it! Didn't have to become one! But then people started blowin' each other up and people started talkin' about the end of the world . . . " A sigh. "And she did it!" He then stared at her. "Would you do it, Lily? Turn yourself into somethin' like Roy?"

She sighed. Even if the man was horrendously drunk - and bipolar! - his intelligence level was sometimes so outrageous that it was just impossible to shut it off for anything, especially concerning about their one friend from Québec who had gained a power from who-knew-where to turn herself in a freaking near-immortal being that couldn't die no matter WHAT you used on her! _And . . . oh, yeah! She can't have a baby with a normal man, literally has to watch as people grow old and die while she stays frozen in time, as beautiful as Venus herself . . .!_ Sloane mused as she gave her companion a warm squeeze of her arm. _Immortality's said to be the ultimate goal of all human science and medicine! Shit, we should send all those dumb fools for a long talk with Roy about all the 'benefits' of a long, healthy life!_ A sigh. "Nah, Zee! I couldn't do it!" she said, which made the older man smile as he gazed down at her. "But then again, I got things to live for that are more touchable for me than whatever Roy's got," she added before sighing. "IF she has anything left these days, that is!" A pause. "Guess that's why she did it."

"She gave up her humanity to save the rest of the poor sods on this planet," Cochrane said. "A goddamned hero for our sad age, Lily! And she's so fuckin' _humble_ about it . . .!"

"Hey!" she snapped. "You keep saying that and maybe . . . "

"Holy shit! What's that?"

Hearing the voice of the owner of the Crash and Burn, both Cochrane and Sloane then looked towards him, and then turned to gaze wherever he was pointing . . .

. . . which made them watch as a series of greenish-white balls seemed to fly down right for their heads!

"_**INCOMING!**_" Sloane cried out . . .

* * *

The _Enterprise_, now in high orbit over Montana, some minutes later . . .

"We're still having problems with sensors, Captain, but from what the on-board visual cameras can see of the launch site, it took some bad hits," Dianna Neilson stated. "I can't tell what the actual state of the _Phoenix_ might be, but the blast doors over the silo itself seem unharmed. Considering how hard those things were built . . . "

"She may have just suffered some shock damage, Captain," Geordi La Forge added; the chief engineer had come up to the bridge to help with the analysis of what had just happened. "We can also tell that the launch control building - or rather, the shack that served as the launch control building - took a near-direct hit. Even if the _Phoenix_ herself is undamaged, Professor Cochrane is going to need help guiding that ship into orbit tomorrow."

Jean-Luc Picard nodded. "Picard to _Defiant_. What's your status, Mister Worf?"

"Lieutenant Burke is currently assisting Ensign Sito and Lieutenant Tutu is helping restore full sensor capacity, Captain," the Klingon replied from the small escort ship now off _Enterprise_'s starboard quarter. "Fortunately, we didn't sustain any sort of damage from the Borg ship as we were fighting it. Lieutenant Burke believes full sensor capacity can be restored in several hours. Tactical sensors will be on-line in an hour."

"Excellent. Lieutenant Burke, how are you feeling?"

An embarrassed chuckled. "Other than my kicking myself in the backside for not switching to fully autonomous mode before we fell into that temporal vortex, Captain, I'm just simply peachy," Morganna Burke stated. "But if you need help getting Cochrane's little wonder airborne, you best get Di down there to look at it. She's more versed in pure engineering matters than I am. Though I honestly wish Lynn was here."

"Are you knocking me down, Lieutenant?" La Forge asked in a teasing voice.

"Commander, you've served with your crew for HOW long now?"

He blinked. "Nine years. Why?"

"We've served with Lynn for SEVENTEEN years, Commander," Burke stated. "It's a trust issue! Nothing personal. Just like Commander Worf here is wishing for Senior Chief Operations Technician O'Brien to help fix up the damage on this little beast we're on."

"Indeed, we could use Miles and Miss Barry and everyone else we could get our hands on right about now," Julian Bashir added.

Chuckles from all the people on the bridge. "Well, let's muster up an away team to go down to the launch site and take a survey of the damage," Picard stated.

Others on the bridge agreed . . .

* * *

Southwest of Bozeman, dawn . . .

"Damn!"

"How bad does it look, Colonel?"

"It's bad," the brown-haired, blue-eyed woman appearing to be in her early twenties said as she lowered her macro-binoculars. Like most of the others in the enhanced assault company she had brought down with her from Suffield in Alberta to check up on Project: Phoenix, she was dressed in standard Canadian Forces CADPAT woodland pattern dress; fortunately for the members of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment that were now active in Big Sky Country, spring flowers and leaves were now blooming and the snow was pretty much all gone from the ground, which removed the need to use the winter/Arctic version of the digitally-designed camouflage clothing. "Launch control room's a total write-off, Cappy. Probably some shock damage to the silo itself." A sigh. "Looks like Zeff's going to be delayed in getting his pretty little ship into the sky."

"Oh, hell!" the sergeant hissed as she took a look herself. "What the hell happened anyway? Do you think it might be ECON reforming, ma'am? Or maybe these Optimum bastards from Europe?"

The lieutenant-colonel - whose slip-ons on her tunic front still bore the proud initials **PPCLI** for her home regiment under the three stripes marking her current rank; the Canadian Special Operations Regiment had (unlike the Special Air Service Regiment) never adopted their own hat badges and other visible insignia that line regiments used - grimaced. "Not ECON," she said. "They were pretty much wiped out by the First and Fifth Armies at Richmond." The Eastern Coalition - in effect, a reborn version of the government of the Confederate States of America from the way-old days - had been one of the pretender governments to claim legitimacy over the United States as a whole in the wake of the 2036 national elections, which had effectively torn the country apart due to the widening gap between the left-wing socialist liberals and the ultra right-wing conservatives as to where they wanted to take their country in the wake of the Bell Riots of twelve years earlier.

Thinking about that, Roy Jameston tried not to shake her head. Canadian politics were bad enough, especially with the ever-existing pressure by Québec to succeed from the Dominion in the shadow of the ascendancy of the Western provinces over the last century or so. Tag in the politics of a badly-fracturing America right on Canada's southern border . . .

And speaking of which . . .

"We've done our morning call-in?" she asked.

Sergeant Caprice Novotná - a third-generation Czech-American who had migrated with her family from outside Waco four years before the Bell Riots in San Francisco forever shut down the Sanctuary Districts across the States; her family would have been swept up into one of the Districts in Dallas due to the non-existence economic opportunities in their part of the Lone Star State at the time - nodded. "Orsy called in to NORTHCOM HQ in Colorado Springs while I was coming up to find you," the field artillery gunner - she had last served in the 4th Armoured Regiment of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery in Borden before finishing her special assaulter course and joining the Special Operations Regiment six years ago - said. "Lots of state governors and NGOs keeping their fingers crossed on this one, Boss."

Jameston nodded as she gazed through her binoculars . . .

. . . and then she tensed. "Got something."

Novotná perked, and then took up her own binoculars to look. One look was more than enough for her. "Jesus H. Christ! What the fuck IS that, Boss?" she hissed.

"Don't know, but I'm betting it's not local," the colonel snarled.

"The Aegis? Miss Guinan's people?" the sergeant asked.

A shake of the head. "Nope. Look at all the cybernetics on 'em. And they all look like they haven't had some decent sun in their whole frickin' _lives_!"

"Want me to get Sergeant Pun?"

"Right away."

"Yes, ma'am."

The sergeant slowly slipped her way down the back of the ridge overlooking Zefram Cochrane's base of operations as the colonel continued to scan the strange party of six humans - or some type of humanoid - in the dark slate-grey bodysuits with the bald heads and the considerable mechanical add-ons to their limbs, chests and faces. Grimacing as she tried to remember all the tales about various alien races that she had learned from people such as her "aunt" Guinan, her former sensei Yubrah Yahe, and the Terran-descent Aegis supervisory agent Gary Seven, Jameston then shook her head. No, none of them ever spoke of a race that looked on cybernetics as some weird fashion statement . . .

She then tensed. "Spotted something?" someone then asked from behind her.

"Yeah, look there," Jameston said, using her hand to aim in the direction where her binoculars were aimed. "They're sticking out like sore thumbs."

Now slightly kneeling behind her, Staff-Sergeant Nirmala Pun scanned towards what the colonel was now pointing at. She was a member of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Gurkha Rifles who had been asked - along with a section of volunteers from her regiment and its support groups representing the combat support elements of the British Army - to come across the Atlantic to work with Roy Jameston's regiment in protecting this particular area of the United States and the valuable people and technology contained within from potential poachers such as the Optimum Movement and those other forces that did NOT want Zefram Cochrane to succeed. It was something the young native of Bandipur - one of a small group of female Gurung to have become part of the Rifles in the last couple of decades - could not refuse, especially given what ELSE she had endured in her lifetime.

Like her current commanding officer - and like all of the augmented assault company now assigned to patrol this part of Montana to ensure that Zefram Cochrane could build his hyperluminal-capable ship without unwanted interruptions - she was a Terran-form Questor.

In effect, _**aliens **_amongst their own people and on their own home planet.

"What are those things?" Pun demanded.

"Don't know," Jameston stated. "Care to join me and find out?"

The Gurkha reached over to squeeze her commander's shoulder. "Let me get a couple friends, sister."

The colonel smirked. "I want Thapa and Ghale."

The sergeant chuckled. "Just the people I was thinking of, Boss."

Jameston thumbed behind her. "Then get them!"

The Gurkha snickered as she moved off . . .

* * *

_Defiant_ . . .

"Alright, Jaxa. Cycle it now."

"Yes, ma'am."

Within a moment, the sensor board that the ensign had been manning lit up. "Alright! We're active again!" Sito said as she tapped controls to run a full diagnostic on the system. "Diagnostic is being done, Commander. We should have full tactical sensors back within five minutes," she added as she gazed on Worf.

"Excellent," the Klingon said before tapping his communicator. "Worf to _Enterprise_. We should have full tactical sensors restored in five minutes. Other systems will take another couple of hours."

"Understood, Mister Worf. We're still working on our own sensors," Picard called back from the larger ship nearby. "We'll be beaming down near the silo where the _Phoenix_ is located to ascertain the damage inside, then move around to see who was hurt. If Cochrane died . . . "

"I understand, Captain," the strategic operations officer of Deep Space Nine said, a grim nod twitching his head. If _Zefram Cochrane_ of all people had died, the future histories of potentially _hundreds_ of worlds would be irreparably changed. "Do you require assistance?"

"If you can spare one of your officers and Doctor Bashir."

"Understood," Worf said before he gazed on Julian Bashir, who was nodding his agreement. "Ensign Sito will accompany him to the planet."

"Make sure she's properly disguised, Commander."

"Aye, sir!"

Hearing that, Sito grinned; it would just be a simple application of a bandage over the creases on the bridge of her nose. "Do you need me further, Lieutenant?" she then asked.

"No, Jaxa, go ahead," Burke said. "Greg, c'mon over here."

"No problem, Morgan," Gregory Tutu said as he came over.

The ensign rose and, after nodding to Worf, followed Bashir off the bridge . . .

* * *

Southwest of Bozeman, twenty minutes later . . .

"What do you think?"

"Definitely cyborgs," Lance-Corporal Janak Thapa whispered as she gazed around the trunk of a large tree at the half-dozen beings working to set up some type of machine - as to what type, neither she nor Roy Jameston could figure out - in a clearing hidden from anyone in the shantytown near the silo holding the _Phoenix_ thanks to a low crest of ridges, much like the ones the members of the Special Operations Regiment and their friends had used to watch over the town as a whole some fifty metres to the south of where the Canadian colonel and the three British Gurkha soldiers were now standing. Though the remoteness of this location hadn't really done Zefram Cochrane much in the way of favours given what just hit the place a couple hours beforehand, the damage that Jameston had seen didn't seem so catastrophic that Project: Phoenix would ultimately have to be declared a failure. "More like robots, I'd say," the experienced sniper from the 1st Battalion of the Royal Gurkha Rifles added. "Look at 'em, Boss. Not saying a thing. Just doing everything as if they were just programmed to do it! Like marionettes."

Jameston nodded; she was standing up behind the tree, though she could glance around the curve of the ancient wood to see what was happening. "Well, let's pop over and say 'hi' to these folks. Maybe they can explain what just happened." She then glanced over to where Nirmala Pun was hidden behind another tree, she herself in the company of Corporal Dhital Ghale, a sapper of the Queen's Gurkha Engineers who was quite handy with most anything that went "boom!" As the staff-sergeant looked over at the colonel, Jameston made a series of hand signals to pass on her instructions. Noting what had been "said" to her, Pun smirked, flashed a thumbs-up in return, and then reached behind her back for her kukri knife, whispering to Ghale at the same time. "Okay, we're cooking with gas," Jameston noted. "Let's move out, Jana."

"Right behind you, Roy," Thapa said.

Both then peeked around the tree to see if any of the aliens/cyborgs/whatever were looking their way, and then the colonel softly moved around the tree, dodging to her left to get behind another tree about four metres away . . .

. . . and then she stopped as an odd ringing noise echoed in the air.

All four soldiers dropped to their knees as their eyes scanned for the source of that noise, and then they turned to see several columns of downward-flowing streaks of light appear some twenty metres away, part-way between the ridge now being occupied by the Canadian and British troops and the place where the cyborgs/aliens/robots were working. The four special operations soldiers then went flat on their bellies, using the high grass and simply not moving to keep any attention from coming their way. By then, the light-showers had assumed humanoid shape, revealing a group of six people - three women, three men - in what appeared to be normal civilian clothing. One of the women and one of the men had large shoulder bags, both of them bearing a stylised winged caduceus insignia. _Medics?_ Jameston wondered as the balding man in the long brown gabardine began to speak out instructions to those around him. _What the hell are . . .?_

"Captain!"

That was a very pale-skinned man in a vest, long-sleeved shirt and what looked like corduroy pants. Before Jameston could wonder what he was - the golden-hued skin and the pale eyes were definitely NOT anything that could be ascribed as "local" - said fellow had snap-drawn a metallic object similar to part of a motorcycle handle-bar and aimed it towards their location. A high shrilling whine echoed through the air as a bolt of bright red energy lashed out to pass between where the four soldiers were now lying down to slam into the device the aliens/robots/whatever had been building. As Jameston looked, all six of those creatures turned around, levelling what appeared to be arm-mounted weapons at the new arrivals. Bolts of energy lashed back at their attackers . . . though fortunately, they had already dodged and ducked as they all drew weapons - even the two medics - and began to pour fire down on the six cybernetic beings.

"Boss!"

Jameston perked on hearing Thapa's hissed voice, and then she looked . . .

. . . before noting that some sort of force-shielding system were now protecting the cyborgs from the incoming fire. Before the colonel could figure out what was going on, she then perked on hearing an accented voice - it sounded almost British, but there was an odd French lilt to it - bark out from behind her, "Everyone! Modulate your phasers to get around their protective fields! We can't let them construct any sort of transmitter unit to bring other elements of the Collective here!"

By then, Thapa had crawled over to join her mission commander. "'Collective?'"she wondered.

"I don't know either," Jameston stated. "Never heard of them."

"We join in?"

The colonel sighed. "Yeah. The bolts of energy those 'borgs are using are the same type of weapons - only smaller - than what hit the camp from out in space."

The lance-corporal nodded. "Coat your blade in blood?"

"You taught me that, Jana!"

A snicker. "We'll make a proper Gurkha out of you yet, Boss!"

Jameston rolled her eyes, and then turned to flash a series of hand-signals to Pun and Ghale. As the sergeant and the corporal both nodded, the colonel then reached into her holster to draw out a Smith & Wesson Model 460 revolver. On seeing that, Thapa smirked as she took up her L1A1 rifle, clicking off the safety. Noting that, the colonel nodded before gazing at the other Gurkhas nearby. Pun and Ghale both noted that, and then nodded; the sergeant had a revolver like Jameston's and the engineering corporal had her own L1A1 rifle, a British-built version of the legendary Fabrique Nationale _Fusil Automatique Léger_ assault rifle from the 1950s. With that, the colonel relaxed as she listened for the sounds of "phaser" fire being used by the people behind her position . . . and then she tensed on hearing an increase of a faint growling noise from ahead of her. A glance over revealed that the half-dozen cyborgs were now advancing away from whatever they were constructing, moving on their attackers in a methodical advance as they shrugged off the storm of incoming fire pouring down on them. A glance at Pun told the Canadian that the Nepalese-born British staff-sergeant was already preparing to help catch the aliens in a surprise cross-fire as her companion levelled her rifle.

"Now," Jameston whispered . . .

* * *

"They're resisting all our attempts at getting around their shields, sir!"

"I can see that!" Picard said as he levelled his phaser . . .

. . . only to watch as the head of the drone he was aiming at suddenly EXPLODED in a shower of ripped cybernetics, pulped brain matter and blood. As the captain's jaw dropped in shocked disbelief, the unmistakable sound of gunfire at full automatic assaulted his ears. The people from both _Enterprise_ and _Defiant_ watched as the remaining drones were shot multiple times from somewhere on both flanks. "Where's that coming from?" Bashir demanded from nearby as he was covered by Sito.

Close to Data, Dianna Neilson allowed her eyes to narrow, and then she gaped. "There're riflemen on the ground to either side of them!" the lieutenant said, pointing to where her infra-red vision was now picking up the unmistakable heat signatures of four people in two fighting pairs. "The drones didn't even notice they were there!"

The gunfire then ceased as the drones - half of which were now effectively missing their heads, the other half with bodies riddled with holes - collapsed to the ground. Silence then fell before movement nearby made the Starfleet people level their phasers as a woman in a brown-green-and-gold combat uniform - that instantly reminding the people from the _Enterprise_ of the CADPATs worn by the young soldiers of H.M.C.S. _Haida_ they had encountered two years before - stood up. "Wait! Hold your fire!" Picard called out, waving the others down. As his companions gazed at him, he added, "I think I might know who that is."

"Who?" Beverly Crusher asked.

"Lance-Corporal Janak Thapa," Picard said. "First Battalion of the Royal Gurkha Rifles. One of the so-called 'Ladies from Hell' that fought under Colonel Jameston. She and a small group of her fellow soldiers from that regiment as well as other Gurkha support units were assigned to augment the Canadian Special Operations Regiment during this time period, mostly to ensure the American Air Force nuclear missile arsenal stayed out of the hands of various factions fighting for control of the government in Washington such as the Eastern Coalition." He then blinked as something seemed to whisper to him, and then he barked out, "_**CORPORAL THAPA! WATCH OUT!**_"

Thapa jolted as she looked over . . .

. . . just as one of the drones who still possessed her head suddenly surged up, her hand lashing out for the corporal's leg, two very thin metal tubes punching through her pants to get at the skin underneath. As Thapa cried out in surprise, another Gurkha - female, also in British Army temperate camouflage uniform - bolted up to level a pistol at the drone's head. One shot later, said drone dropped to the ground with half her head gone . . . just as someone in what was clearly Canadian Army CADPATs came up to help Thapa stagger away from the dead Borg. "Decapitate and dismember them!" the new arrival barked out in a flat North American accent.

"Excuse me!" a voice called out . . .

. . . as another woman in CADPATs ran right through the middle of the Starfleet line, a medical bag with her. "Oh, my God!" Crusher gasped. "That was Sergeant Mandy Colborne!" At Picard's curious look, the _Enterprise_'s chief medical officer stated, "She's the Angel of Medina, Jean-Luc! She was the one who directed the evacuation of the children of the city before the Optimum Movement attacked it with a radiological terror device! The field medical training camp at Bordeaux is named after her!"

"She's also a Questor."

Silence.

More silence.

Still more silence.

And then . . .

"What?" Crusher gasped as she gazed wide-eyed at Bashir.

The chief medical officer of Deep Space Nine had his tricorder out. "I just scanned all of them over there. Not to mention the ninety or so that are now coming down behind us," he stated before gazing on the others who had come with him from both _Enterprise_ and _Defiant_. "They're all Questors. _**Every last one of them!**_"

"Corporal Thapa appears not to be affected by the injection of Borg nanoprobes into her body, sir," Data added. "No doubt because - as a Questor - she is now a silicon-based lifeform. I cannot explain how or when she, much less Colonel Jameston and the others, Crossed into the Fold."

People just stared wide-eyed at the android, and then Picard breathed out. "_Mon Dieu_ . . . "

"«Are you from Québec, sir?»"

Perking on hearing that question spoken in his native language, he automatically answered, "«Actually, I'm from France. A town named La Barre near the Swiss . . . »"

He caught himself, and then turned to find himself gazing at a smiling woman with master warrant officer's rank on her slip-on, that over the unit identification tab marked **12e RBC**, which Picard knew meant _le 12e Régiment Blindé du Canada_, one of the Dominion's armoured regiments in this time period; according to the history of that regiment's Starfleet Marines counterpart - the 12th Reconnaissance Battalion (12e Régiment Blindé du Canada) - Picard once read, it was often assigned to work with battalions of le Royal 22e Régiment. The name **BELANGER** was on her name-tag over her right breast pocket. "I really shouldn't have said that," he admitted in English.

"A little too late, Captain. If that is your rank, by the way," Master Warrant Officer Maria Belanger stated as she gave him an understanding smile. "We recognised those cyborgs' weapons as the same type that was used to blow up the area around the silo with the _Phoenix_ inside it. They were here setting up something . . . and when you all came down here, you moved to stop them from calling in friends from this 'Collective' you mentioned their being a part of. We may be a bunch of dumb Army people . . . "

"But you are also all Questors, which means you've probably met non-Terrans before, Sergeant-Major," Bashir cut in. "And since you clearly have to do your best to keep the truth about yourselves as secret as possible - because where we come from, NONE OF US knew that your particular unit was fully composed of Terran-form Questors! - you probably feel it only right to keep the existences of other aliens secret as well."

"Don't you mean '_when_ we come from?'"

Picard winced, and then he turned . . .

. . . as a woman bearing the three gold stripes of a Canadian Army lieutenant-colonel and the unit identification patch of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry on her epaulette slip-on calmly came up to join them, calmly reloading her revolver. As the Starfleet people all gazed wide-eyed at her - with Sito Jaxa looking ready to drop to her knees in awe at the fact that she was in the presence of one of _them_! - Roy Jameston smiled. "You're all human - or at least human-form android like this handsome boy with the gold skin here, not to mention his really cute girlfriend . . . " - She grinned as she indicated Data and Dianna Neilson, the former blinking in surprise while the latter tried not to blush - " . . . and the young one over there . . . " - here, she pointed to Sito, who looked ready to prostrate herself before a being that was almost equal to the Prophets themselves in Bajoran myth - " . . . and you were pretty damned concerned about stopping those whatever those things were from setting up that unit there. I know of the Aegis; Gary Seven was the man who ensured I was adopted after my real mother abandoned me on the streets of Québec's Lower Town. I also know of the El-Aurians; the chief bartender at my regiment's home station is one of them and she's been an aunt to me since I was knee high to a grasshopper. So I know aliens exist - as, yes, my girls and I all could be seen as being aliens here on Earth - and I know about the possibility of time travel; Gary's Beta V computer in New York City can do that sort of thing. Which exactly are you?"

Eyes locked on Picard as the captain sighed. "I don't think the Temporal Prime Directive is going to really apply now, Jean-Luc," Crusher advised.

The captain sighed. "I only hope Temporal Investigations will agree with you on that, Beverly," he said before he stood up to face Jameston. "Colonel Jameston, I'm Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship _Enterprise_, a vessel of the Starfleet of the United Federation of Planets, which Earth is a member-world of . . . " A pause before he finished, " . . . three-hundred-and-ten years ahead of your time period." He then waved to the others beside him. "From my own ship: My chief medical officer, Doctor Beverly Crusher; my second officer and operations officer, Lieutenant-Commander Data; and my chief engineering officer, Lieutenant-Commander Geordi La Forge. From the starship _Cornwallis_: Ship's astrophysicist, Lieutenant Dianna Neilson. From Federation space station Deep Space Nine: The station chief medical officer, Doctor Julian Bashir; and junior operations officer, Ensign Sito Jaxa. For her, the first name is the family name."

Jameston nodded, a wry smile crossing her face. "Well, welcome to Bozeman in 2063. I hope you're not expecting much, folks; this place is definitely lacking in tourist attractions." As the people, both from the present and the future, laughed, she then looked back at the dead drones. "I assume those things we just killed are also time-travellers," she mused.

"Yes. They came here to stop a very important event for all of Earth which will start happening tomorrow afternoon in this time zone, starting around two o'clock," Picard stated. "We destroyed their ship, but clearly, they damaged the _Phoenix_ to stop Professor Cochrane from making his first hyperluminal test flight."

"And it HAS to fly tomorrow, right?" Jameston asked. "No ifs, ands, buts, maybes or what-have-yous, right?"

"Yes."

The colonel sighed. "Colonel, there's nobody in the company - Hell! Nobody in the whole damned _regiment_! - that knows anything about what Doc Cochrane's trying to do!" Maria Belanger stated. "How in the name of God are we going to get a hundred year-old modified Titan II ICBM flying into space, to say ANYTHING of making use of the superimpellor system to make it go faster than light?"

"You should not be concerned about that, Master Warrant Officer Belanger," Data then stated. "As soon as we fully comprehended what the Borg were attempting to do, we realised that we would have to assist in ensuring the _Phoenix_ does fly tomorrow as history states that she must do. To not do so will heavily damage the course of history, which would be quite catastrophic in many ways to many people."

"'Borg?'"

Eyes locked on Jameston. "Yes, that's what they call themselves. At least, that's how it translates into English," Picard stated. "In the meantime, Colonel, we would appreciate your assistance and the assistance of all your subordinates in helping us repair the damage so that the professor can actually fly his ship tomorrow." An embarrassed smile then crossed his face. "We would . . . "

"Want to keep any references about the future to a very, very, very dull roar, right?"

"Yes."

"Fair enough," Jameston said. "Gary blows a gasket every time that computer of his detects any sort of massive deviation in the time line. And since you mentioned this 'Temporal Investigations' team of yours, I can guess they'll probably go crazy too once you get back to your proper place in the universe." At Picard's nod - the starship captain definitely looked relieved on realising that the infantry colonel clearly wasn't giving in to any sort of blinding paranoia over this incident - she took a deep breath. "So I hope you got some way to lose those bodies." She thumbed the dead drones nearby.

"I'll have that taken care of right now," Picard said as he tapped his communicator . . .

* * *

Captain's Secure Log, Wednesday 4 April 2063, 1310 hours Coordinated Universal Time,_  
Our unplanned time-trip into the past was successful in one way; we destroyed the Borg probe that was attempting to destroy the _Phoenix_ and prevent First Contact from happening tomorrow in this time period. However, damage was done by the probe before we destroyed it, thus forcing us to beam an away team down to the launch area near Bozeman in Montana to assist with repairs to ensure the _Phoenix_ does fly on schedule and earns the notice of the Vulcan scout ship _T'Plana-Hath_.  
Fortunately for us, we have made a discovery about something that has never been revealed in the history books of this time period: Lieutenant-Colonel Roy Jameston, then-commanding officer of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment - who was, when she was a child, an unofficial "niece" to my friend Guinan - is in fact a Terran-form Questor, having Crossed into the Fold in the wake of the 2036 national elections in the United States which launched the Second American Civil War phase of the Third World War. She - as she revealed to myself and the other away team members - is fully aware of Guinan's extraterrestrial origins. She also is a friend of the famous Aegis supervisor Gary Seven, encountered by Captain Kirk's _Enterprise_ in the year 1968.  
Atop that, we have also learned that the First Company of the Special Operations Regiment - including a small section of Gurkhas assigned to work with CSOR from the British Army's Royal Gurkha Rifles and their supporting regiments - are ALL Questors.  
While I personally realise this is so beyond unorthodox when it comes to dealing with a potential historical paradox, I am reminded of my crew's recent encounter with the Canadian starship _Haida_ from the year 2010. Perhaps - and I'm personally sure Colonel Jameston will do her best to guarantee it - the potential damage this incident has caused the flow of history will not be as potentially catastrophic as I first believed . . ._

* * *

The _Phoenix_'s silo . . .

"How bad is it, Geordi?"

"Not as bad as I first believed it would be, Captain," La Forge stated as he scanned the gleaming silver intercontinental ballistic missile-turned-warp prototype, which was seated quite comfortably in its launch cradle. Everyone was examining it from the middle gantry, set about halfway up the side of the _Phoenix_'s hull. "Damage to the throttle assembly; it's leaking radiation, but it's not lethal to us just yet. I'll bet that as soon as we get to the _Enterprise_, the Doc's going to give us all shots."

Picard nodded. "What of yourself, Dianna?"

Neilson smiled; like La Forge, the lieutenant from the _Cornwallis_ had her own tricorder out and she was scanning the _Phoenix_ to make sure all was well. "I live full-time on a ship that harnesses _tachytron_ radiation as a fuel source, Captain. It may not be as harmful to myself - radiation is just another form of energy, after all; my body needs it to continue operating properly - but I think the sooner we can fix that throttle assembly and get this pretty bird flying, the better for all of us."

"Estimated time of repairs?" Picard asked as he gazed reverently upon the gleaming silver hull of the old missile, which still bore the stars-and-stripes roundel of the United States' military forces on its side, along with the words **U.S. AIR FORCE** indicating the service that had requested this craft's initial creation as a carrier for weapons of mass destruction decades before.

"Approximately twelve hours, Captain," Data stated; he was standing at the other side of the missile silo. "The company quartermaster sergeant working for First Company of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, Petty Officer Hornstein, made sure that sufficient supplies to allow the replacement of all parts to the _Phoenix_ were dispatched here from Canadian Forces Bases Suffield, Edmonton, Wainwright, Cold Lake and Moose Jaw over the last ten months."

"Good." A hum. "That's another thing the history books never mentioned."

"What is that, sir?" the android asked.

"The amount of support the Canadians, the British and other nations were pouring into this whole project. To say anything of those such as Micah Brack and other wealthy people who financed this without any sort of guarantee of final success in the project," Picard stated as he reached over to feel the titanium outer hull of the _Phoenix_. "I suspect we may never know the full story about this ship."

"You mean Colonel Jameston?" La Forge wondered.

Picard nodded. "Yes." He then lowered his voice to a whisper as he added, "We all know what happens to her . . . "

"I FOUND HER!"

The four Starfleet people spun up to gaze at the upper gantry located at the level of the _Phoenix_'s cockpit. Instantly, Sergeant Mandy Colborne came out, carrying a dazed and bleeding woman in her arms. "She's got bad radiation poisoning," the physician assistant advised the people from the future. "Can your doc help us?"

"Of course!" Picard said as he tapped his communicator under his jacket. "Picard to Crusher. Sergeant Colborne has located Doctor Sloane. She reports heavy radiation poisoning and she needs medical assistance right away."

"Understood. On my way; we'll beam out straight from the silo onto the _Enterprise_," Crusher called from the area of the main shantytown where an augmented landing party from both the _Enterprise_ and the _Defiant_ were now joining the members of the First Company of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment on a search for one Zefram Cochrane.

"Still no sign of the professor by any of our search parties, Captain," Deanna Troi added; she had been with Crusher. "But Colonel Jameston assures us this is normal for him."

"Is she there with you, Counsellor?"

"Jameston here," a curt voice answered.

Picard sighed. "Do you think the professor might have been killed?"

A tired sigh. "That's a possibility, but Zeff's a tough old bird. I've got faith in the man, Captain. You don't survive out here in the boonies with next to nothing that resembles normal civilisation - not that there hasn't been much in the way of 'normal' civilisation since before Khan Singh started to play God with people's lives seventy years ago - and at the same time try to build a revolutionary space ship to break the final barrier to deep space travel without having some reserves of guts and determination somewhere in your heart. We'll find him."

"Much that I do admire your faith in the man, I have to ask this: What if he **_does_** die? Can a pilot take his place?"

By then, Crusher had come down into the silo and was moving to help Colborne get Lily Sloane up to the _Enterprise_. "Well, that's why we need Lils back on her feet again, Captain," Jameston warned. "She knows almost as much as Zeff does. And like Zeff, Lils has lost pretty much anything to keep her tied down to the planet. Is there going to be THAT much of a difference if Lils gets into the history books instead?"

"I wish I can really speculate on that," Picard stated as he noted the hum of the transporter above indicating Crusher's departure to the _Enterprise_ with the wounded Sloane and Sergeant Colborne. He then perked as he remembered something. "What is the status of the Optimum Movement in North America at this time?"

"So far, they're being meek and quiet, but that'll change for sure in the next few years. Especially if the _Phoenix_ breaks the light-speed barrier and opens up the possibility of settling the habitable planets in Alpha Centauri in **_months_** instead of years," Jameston replied. "Phil Green and his people in the Freedom Rangers are still on the most wanted lists in every police department on the planet, but there's been no real move to try to track the bastards down to bring them to justice for all the dirty nuke bombings all across America during the Forties when ECON was going crazy. I know Green's buddy-buddy with Adrik Thorsen. They're both ex-Army boys; they met when they were serving time in Delta Force and the Special Air Service when the Fawkes Rebellion was exploding all over Britain. This may be all classical history for you, Captain, but for Phil Green, Adrik Thorsen, Hobart Amber, Maurice Beausoleil, Francisco de la Garza, Pietro Gaffaldi, Mikhail Shubayev and all the rest of those guys . . . " A sigh. "Well, the garbage they saw in places like the Sanctuary Districts, the Welfare Ghettoes and all the other dumping grounds for the poor, the sick and the unemployed across Earth happened practically _yesterday_, when they were all still young and impressionable captains and majors."

Picard smirked. "So why were _you_ so different, Colonel?"

A laugh. "Hell, I don't know! Maybe because I'm a woman? Or a Questor? Or maybe because they haven't given me my fourth stripe yet to make me a full colonel instead of a half-one?"

The captain of the _Enterprise_ chuckled on hearing that. "Well, we'll soon have people here to start the repairs on the _Phoenix_, Colonel. You go find Professor Cochrane."

"Roger that, Captain."

"I'll stay with the colonel, Captain," Troi promised. "Troi out."

The link between Picard and Troi faded. "How was that, Captain?" La Forge then asked, the excitement in his voice quite obvious to the others in the room, as he gazed at the older man. And no, it wasn't just because he was standing next to the _Phoenix_, which - in the eyes of any Terran engineer from the Twenty-fourth Century - was the ship that bore the _mother_ of all warp drive systems! "To actually speak to HER of all people?"

The captain chuckled. "It almost reminded me of speaking to Hiromi Moroboshi in a way, Geordi," he said as he reached over to touch the _Phoenix_'s surface again. "She knows deep in her heart and soul the responsibilities she has to protect humanity - not just in Canada, but beyond Canada too - from the darker impulses that lurk in the hearts of those she has fought against and will soon fight against in the coming decade. She won't run away from them, either." A shake of the head. "Why in God's name did she have to _suffer_ like that, Geordi? Virtually _martyred_ at the very moment of her ultimate _triumph_? Sixteen years from now . . .!"

"She's on her way to Vulcan to become Roy Pannan," the chief engineer stated, shaking his head; he had been briefed on all the theories about the Terran-form Questor living at the edge of Vulcan's Forge in their time period shortly after the _Enterprise_-D had encountered H.M.C.S. _Haida_. "The Temporal Prime Directive makes sense, but . . . "

"It hurts," Data noted.

"Yeah . . . "

"Still, if we tell her, we could make things worse, Geordi," Dianna Neilson warned.

A sigh. "Yeah."

"Captain, may I ask you something?"

"Certainly, Mister Data."

"I've noticed you've been touching the _Phoenix_'s outer surfaces since we entered this silo," Data noted. "Is there some emotional value in doing that?"

The captain smiled. "A boyhood fantasy," he explained. "Back in our day, this ship hangs in one of the galleries of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. I always wanted to touch her." He gazed up at the converted Titan II missile. "To actually touch an historical object of _this_ significance makes the history surrounding that object - no matter how far back such an event was from the point we view it from - more real, Data. It's a natural human emotion when one encounters something with this level of significance to our own past."

Data considered that, and then he nodded. "I believe I would not as of yet be able to draw such a conclusion if I touch the hull of this craft. All I would be able to perceive are the actual physical qualities of the materials that went into its construction." He then blinked before gazing at Neilson. "What of you, Di? Would you deprive the same sort of emotional attachment if you came into physical contact with the hull of this craft?"

"Probably I would. But I would be able to sense all the physical properties you can sense when you touch it as well," Neilson stated as she gave him a smile. "That's part of the reason I was so happy to become like you at last seventeen years ago, Data." A sigh escaped her as she slipped her arm around his. "I've always been attracted to you, Data. And my feelings for you won't vanish until the day I go permanently off-line myself. However long in the future that might be."

As he nodded in comprehension, she paused, and then she reached over to feel the _Phoenix_'s hull. "Loads of imperfections in the titanium casing of the outer hull," she reported. "That really doesn't surprise me; this thing rolled off the Martin production line in California in 1965. One of Cochrane's supporters got it out of a storage shed at Malmstrom Air Force Base north of here when this whole project started in 2050, then had it moved down here in an overnight ground transport vehicle trip." A rocking of the head as she used the multi-spectral visual capabilities built into her eyes to take in everything about the _Phoenix_. "Temperature variations in the fuel manifold inside the ship. Radiation energy affecting certain components in the hull from the throttle assembly leak." A shake of the head. "But even thought I'm pretty much an android these days, I can still take both sides of what I feel about being close to this ship - the emotional feelings from the memories and the knowledge I have about her as well as the physical sensations of touching her - and mix them together. The result of that is that I find myself in simple _awe_ over the people who've worked to make this thing real, Data. Building it out here in the middle of practically _nowhere_, with little technological and logistical support save for what could be trucked down from Alberta or elsewhere when it was safe from bandits, rogue soldiers or supporters of the Eastern Coalition, the Freedom Rangers and the Optimum Movement. Ultimately always under the threat of people that NEVER wanted her to fly . . . and, by extension, open the floodgates of migration off the planet and out of this solar system to Alpha Centauri and beyond. Taking away all the would-be 'subjects' to the new 'kings' the colonel's fighting now."

She pulled her hand away. "They had next to nothing when you get down to it . . . and they were still able to change the course of history," Neilson stated. "Now we have to make sure that history happens."

"Indeed," Picard stated. "Let's make it so."

The others nodded . . .

_**To be continued . . .**_


	5. Side Story: The Optimal Traveller

Deep Space Nine, Stardate 50669.3 . . .

"You realise how valuable this knowledge is."

"That's the reason I came here to deal with you, Master Quark. You are well known amongst my sisters who have travelled in these parts for being particularly optimal. Both in the true pursuit of profit . . . as well as accountability."

Hearing that from his current customer, the Ferengi felt the blood rush into his lobes as her compliment sank into his heart. "You're too kind to a humble businessman such as me, my dear," he said as he placed the drink on the table before him. "So when exactly did those of the Fold you have dealt with develop this sort of procedure? My contacts among Ferengi-form Questors would be very curious to know that story."

She nodded in appreciation at his caution towards what she had just presented him. After arriving at the former Cardassian mining station, she had observed him for the past couple of weeks to ensure he was the right sort of businessperson she could deal with as she sought to prepare for her integration amongst those of the Fold living on Earth before making official contact with him. Indeed, Quark was the optimal person to approach in passing on this information and getting something useful for herself in exchange. "At least three hundred years ago," she answered. "Roughly at the time their organic 'brothers' first swept through this part of the galaxy," she replied as she sipped the drink she had been offered, and then she nodded her approval at the taste. "It was at that time that leaders of my sisters on Gen Grigar came to realise the number of their race who had been taken away by their nanotechnology had grown past a critical threshold point where the race itself would not ultimately survive. It had to change. Thus, this process was developed." She indicated the data cube - it was Grigari, but could be interpreted by any of the major advanced races such as the Ferengi - she had just given him.

Fortunately for her, Quark had a scanner in hand when she had presented the cube to him . . . and after he had seen what was contained within, he had a vision of literally _swimming_ in a bathtub full of gold-pressed latinum!

Questors all over the Alpha and Beta Quadrants would _**kill**_ for this information.

"I've heard of the Grigari," Quark said. "They think themselves simple traders for those interested in their technology, but they don't care a whit about customer satisfaction. We _smelt_ what they were as soon as they showed up on our doorstep." A laugh. "Hah! We knew right away they were pirates! In fact, the instant we saw how 'good' they supposedly had it when they started displaying their wares, we knew it was a classic case of the Forty-Seventh Rule of Acquisition we were dealing with. Unlike all those other races who thought that allowing themselves to be chopped up into slabs of beef and stitched back together with those nanoprobes out of a belief that they would get a free ticket into the Great Material Continuum without working to gain access to it!"

The traveller hummed. "What is this Forty-Seventh Rule?"

"'_Never trust a man wearing a better suit than your own_,'" Quark quoted.

She considered that, and then she nodded. "I would agree to the philosophy about it. I tend to see myself as being more socialist in thinking - I do hail from Britain in the mid-Twenty-first Century - and after noting during the time how arrogant the rich . . . were especially when compared to those not so wealthy . . . "

"I assume you joined the so-called 'Optimum Movement' at the time."

A sigh. "I was actually a senior leader in that group," she admitted. "I was one of Phillip Green's first converts from Britain." She shook her head. "And I might have kept on charging ahead to seek what I wanted hadn't a sister from Gen Grigar stepped in and opened my eyes to how to become truly optimal in body and soul."

Quark nodded. "Hence, the reason you came here instead of going to Tokzheto," he noted, a knowing smirk crossing his face. "Afraid they would turn around and dismember you the instant they heard your name?" At her nod, he laughed. "I don't blame you. In many ways, the Tokzhetoans were like your own countrymen five centuries ago when they forged the greatest empire Earth ever saw. Pragmatic yet always looking for a profit. A very admirable race, they are." A shake of the head. "It's a damn shame that Terrans who stayed behind on Earth lost that!"

"They haven't lost it totally," she noted.

"What do you mean?"

"There are those of my race from Earth and her colonies within the Federation who gladly deal with good businessmen like you!"

Another laugh from the Ferengi. "Ah, you're like everyone of the Fold I've ever met! So quick with the compliments and the courtesies! And what's better, you always MEAN it deep down!" Quark then nodded as he gazed on the data cube before he gazed on her. "So what type of ship would you require?" he wondered.

"The best superimpellor motors - pardon me, the best warp drive - available on the civilian market," she stated matter-of-factly. "It has to be fast, but comfortable. Provisions for one crew as pilot - myself - and a maximum of ten guests for short journeys in-system. I would think something like one of those utility craft this station uses would be about right. I would prefer my quarters to be large enough to allow me to personally entertain more respectable guests."

He laughed again. This woman - even if she had been fully separated from her birth race for close to three centuries - had developed some of the interesting cultural quirks most Questors in Alpha and Beta Quadrants that Quark knew of displayed. In fact, some of his dabo girls in the past were Bajoran-form, Terran-form and Cardassian-form Questors who had come to work for him for a chance to try something new and fun. He had reaped handfuls of latinum whenever they came here; given their horrendous strength, they could handle a rampaging Lemnorian with one arm while still managing the dabo table with a smile on their faces. _I wonder whatever did happen to that Jeina girl_, the Ferengi then mused to himself before humming. "I know who to talk to."

"Who?" she asked.

"Zerha. She's one of your sisters living on Thalos; it's not too far from here. She builds private ships on her spare time; she normally serves as a secret financial advisor to the chief liquidator of the Commerce Authority there. The best small warp-capable couriers you'd ever see; it's a wonder to me why Starfleet doesn't order them. When people want good ships, she's the one to go to . . . and when they see what she builds, they pay top latinum for those ships!" Quark then nodded. "Give me an hour to contact her. She'll be definitely interested in this!" He held up the data cube.

"I'm not going anywhere," she vowed.

And with that, he was off. She relaxed in her chair as she took a chance to savour the delightful Maraltian Seev-ale that he had served for her. She then perked as she felt something close by, and then she smiled. "There was nothing illegal in what I gave Master Quark, good Constable. You can transform back now."

The empty chair at the table behind her morphed into the form of a dark-haired humanoid in the uniform of a Bajoran civilian constable. "So what was that, Madame?" Odo asked as he sat beside her. "I haven't seen Quark _that_ excited for some time now."

"Have you ever been a father, Constable?"

He perked, and then sighed. "No. I never had the chance to reproduce."

"I have just handed him the key to ensure those of my sisters who live in this part of the galaxy will become mothers at last without resorting to the Crossing into the Fold." She then winked at him. "Of course, I bear my own copy of that knowledge for my own personal uses."

Odo gazed at her, and then he nodded. "You Questors have always struck me as odd. Separated as you are from your parent races, yet you do everything to always try to be a part of it and help those who are still organic to evolve. What satisfaction does that give you?"

"I don't know. As the woman who saved my life once said, we are all works-in-progress. We may want one thing one day . . . and then change our minds the very next day. Our individual quests to be optimal take each and every one of us on paths we can never predict." She then perked, looking up through a window to see the Bajoran Wormhole open to allow ships to emerge from the Gamma Quadrant. "What of you?"

"I have my work," he said. "And that satisfies me very greatly."

"You have reached your own optimum, you mean?"

"No, I don't think so. But I'm getting there."

"Then I believe you will succeed in your own quest, Constable."

"You are too courteous, Ms. Thorsen . . . "

* * *

"I'm sorry, Brother! I didn't know that Odo was here . . .!"

"Relax!" Quark said as he and Rom watched the interplay between the traveller and the Changeling constable via a private monitor in the former's office. "There was nothing at all illegal about what Adrienne and I were discussing. A simple transaction with clear terms on both sides. Just like the Twenty-Eighth Rule of Acquisition says."

Rom blinked, and then he gaped. "Oh, that's right! That was written as a sort of add-on to the Twenty-Seventh Rule of Acquisition."

"'_There is nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman_,'" Quark immediately quoted the Twenty-Seventh Rule.

"'_And nothing more profitable than dealing with a Questor_,'" Rom then read out the seldom spoken-of Twenty-Eighth Rule.

"Especially if she's Terran-form."

"Especially if she's ANY form, Brother!"

The brothers laughed - after their first time dealing with the synthetic race of incredibly beautiful women, they had come up with a proposal for a 279th Rule of Acquisition that actually had been accepted by Grand Nagus Zek thirty years ago: "'_Always do everything to make Questors happy when they come to do business. Making them happy is worth five times their weight in latinum_.'" - and then Rom blinked. "Do you really think Zerha would actually provide a ship for Adrienne to use?"

"Of course she will. And she'll make sure that ship will be her finest work! After all, Rom, what's the one thing Questors all miss most about being organic?"

"To be mothers, of . . . "

It hit him.

"Oh, Brother! This is worth TWENTY times Adrienne's weight in latinum!" Rom then breathed out, his eyes wide as he imagined how Zerha - who, like other Ferengi-form Questors, was incredibly beautiful for her parent species - would react to what Adrienne Thorsen had just given Quark. "If you give this to her in trade . . . "

"She will personally make sure any ships we purchase in the future from her will be of such good condition that we'll never have troubles like we did with the _Treasure_!"

Rom winced as he remembered that trip to Earth the previous year when his son Nog had been accepted to Starfleet Academy. He then took a moment to consider what Quark had in mind concerning the Ferengi-form Questor shipwright on Thalos . . . and what she would do with what the traveller the elder Ferengi had been dealing with had just given him. "She'd probably do it for a discount!" he breathed out.

"Even better, Rom: For FREE!"

The brothers gazed on each other, and then they laughed . . .

* * *

_**The Dark Lady and the Black Crow**_**  
Side Story:**_** The Optimal Traveller**_  
by Fred Herriot

* * *

Petawawa, Ontario, Stardate 50891.2 . . .

"Welcome to the Starfleet Marines Museum."

As people settled down in the large auditorium located near the main gate of the former Canadian Forces base that was still humbly nicknamed the "training ground of the warriors," the beautiful woman in the rather plain clothes took her seat, close to a small party of three Vulcans, one of which was in a Starfleet uniform with lieutenant's pips on his collar, the other in normal travelling robes. As she relaxed herself, she was quick to sense the youngest of that group - a girl looking to be about ten Earth-years of age - gaze curiously at her for a moment. Turning to smile at her, the woman with the wavy, rusty reddish-brown hair stylized in a left-size part and spilling down past her shoulder blades turned her attention back to the guide for this tour, a young second lieutenant - the traveller was aware of the proper rank insignia for those who served in the ground forces of the Federation's defensive/exploration service - in the new duty dress, which came with a charcoal green-trimmed-black overcoat bearing epaulettes (with appropriate cloth slip-ons bearing his rank), a cloth nametag, the Starfleet arrowhead-shaped communicator unit on the left breast and an embroidered unit patch for Starfleet Marines Base Petawawa. Focusing her vision on that crest, the traveller could only smile at the show of respect the modern army of the Federation had for one of its ancestral services; save for the Saint Edward's Crown and the wreath of maple leaves around the disk displaying the head of a stag with antlers - it was replaced by the Federation's wreathed local cluster insignia at the top - it was no different than the heraldic crest of Canadian Forces Base Petawawa.

"'The training ground of the warriors,'" she whispered.

"What does that mean?"

She perked, and then smiled at the girl that had been looking at her. "It's the motto of the base," she explained. "In one of the languages of the First Nations of Canada - I don't remember which one - it's said _Endazhe Kinamandowa Chimaganishak_."

"T'Neri, please be quiet," the older woman seated beside her - clearly the girl's mother - then stated. "The lieutenant is about to begin the briefing."

T'Neri gazed on her, and then she nodded before turning her attention to the stage. "I'm Second Lieutenant Nicholas Meyer, currently assigned to Base Staff as one of the guides for visitors wishing to tour the Museum. Please feel free to ask any questions at anytime during this introduction," the officer there announced. "For your own personal information, I am formerly a platoon second-in-command in Alpha Company of the 3rd Infantry Battalion of the Starfleet Marines, which is descent from the Royal Canadian Regiment, the Dominion of Canada's premier active service infantry unit. This base we are on now actually serves as the home station for not just the 3rd Infantry Battalion, but her sister infantry battalion, the 52nd Infantry Battalion - the Canadian Guards - and the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, which is descent from the Royal Canadian Regiment's counterpart in the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps, the Royal Canadian Dragoons. All three units today serve as part of the 2nd Brigade of the First Starfleet Marine Division, headquartered at Base Annex Kingston. Yes?" he said as he pointed to a place off to the traveller's right forward, where a hand had been raised.

"Is the ancestral tribe of your former tribe the one the Lady Warrior Jameston served as a part of, young officer?" a gruff, alien-sounding voice asked.

"No, sir," Meyer said as a smile crossed his face. Noting that, the traveller was quick to realise that the young officer had been probably asked THAT question - or questions like it - many times before since he was assigned to this post. "Colonel Jameston was a member of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, which exists today as the 14th Infantry Battalion based in Alberta at Marine Base Wainwright." He then noted another hand rise up. "Yes, Cadet?" he called out, pointing.

A female Andorian in the uniform of a Starfleet Academy cadet rose. "Lieutenant Meyer, why is it Colonel Jameston is not addressed by her proper rank of lieutenant-colonel? That was the rank she held when she disappeared after the Battle of Space Station Perfection. The Marines - at least those I've talk to - say she is a full colonel in the service even if she is seen as missing in action to this day."

"_LEF-ten-ant_!" the traveller hissed. "Can't you pronounce it _right_?"

T'Neri gazed curiously at her again. Meyer chuckled. "At ease, Cadet," he then said, which made the young cadet relax; no doubt, she was quite nervous speaking to an officer of "the Proud" (as members of the Starfleet Marines were often nicknamed on the streets), even if said officer was himself a recent Academy graduate. "To answer your question, the then-Lieutenant-Colonel Jameston refused promotion to the rank of colonel several times during her last posting as commanding officer of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment from 2048 to 2079. In fact, the Prime Minister of Canada - at the time of the Battle for Station Perfection - prepared special legislation to have the colonel properly promoted to that rank as an act of Parliament, which the colonel could _NOT_ refuse if she didn't want to be forced to resign her commission." A sigh. "Sadly, the colonel went missing. When she was declared missing-in-action, the Canadian Parliament passed the act promoting her to that rank unanimously. And since the colonel is still seen as missing-in-action, she is viewed today as a member of the Starfleet Marines. As a colonel."

The traveller closed her eyes. "You want to turn her into a _leatherneck_?" she hissed out, once again drawing T'Neri's stare towards her. "She'd never live it down, you idiots! She's a _light infantryman_! A _skirmisher_! She didn't sail on _ships_!"

She sank back into her chair as the briefing continued . . .

* * *

Later . . .

"What fascinates you, my daughter?"

Perking on hearing her father Storal - who was now assigned to Starfleet Medical in Paris - ask that question, T'Neri nodded off to her right. "That woman there, Father."

Storal looked. A Terran woman with quite aesthetically-pleasing red-brown hair and blue eyes, wearing fashionable but not too remarkable clothing, now standing in a good imitation of an at-ease posture in front of a beautiful painting of Glorianna Theresa Jameston. The famous colonel was depicted in a formal red-and-black uniform, including a white shirt buttoned up to her neck, medals and special duty qualification badges on her right breast and the gold-trimmed dark maroon camp flag of her regiment in the background. Remembering what he had seen in a dataPADD which contained all information about what was in the museum, the healer then recalled that the portrait had been done after the famous soldier disappeared in 2079. "My daughter, there are many on Earth who admire Colonel Jameston for what she did. Why does this one fascinate you?"

T'Neri switched to her native tongue. "«Because she stated things that make me believe she may have known the Lady Roy personally, Father,»" she answered, which made Storal's eyebrow arch. "«From what I overheard, I believe now she is a Questor.»"

Storal took a moment to consider that conclusion T'Neri had made, and then he nodded. "«That is a possibility, my daughter,»" he admitted, switching to the native language of his people in respects to his daughter's obvious desire for privacy; only those who had subcutaneous translators in their bodies would still understand them. And all those normally wore Starfleet uniforms of one sort or another, very few of which were in the room now. "«Still, even if she did know the Lady Roy before her catastrophic memory loss in 2079 and her relocation to Vulcan, if the lady there would desire to meet her, she will be disappointed because the Lady Roy will not remember her.»"

"«My husband, if this person is indeed an acquaintance of the Lady Roy, it would be logical to inform her of what has happened,»" Storal's wife T'Kasha then noted; they were all taking a week away from their residence in Paris to tour various locations across Canada, including the ever-famous Niagara Falls and the high peaks of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, Alberta and the Yukon.

The healer considered that. While there was no fully-proven connection between Roy Pannan - a Terran-form Questor now living at the site of the Kiln of S'harien, located near the edge of Vulcan's Forge - and the woman who had been one of the primary reasons Earth's Third World War did not end in the complete destruction of the human race on their home planet, there were many who strongly believed in such a connection. Even more so, those who believed in that connection fervently hoped that some way could be found to restore Roy Pannan's memories of her life before she had been found by the crew of the explorer _Sha'ath_ in 2084. However, given the fact that it was also believed that person had endured a version of what Questors as a whole addressed as "the Silence" - the complete wiping out of critical genetically-implanted memories in their synthetic DNA which befell their ancestors fifty millennia ago - such hopes were tempered by a terrible realisation that the chances of giving Roy Pannan the memories of her life as Roy Jameston back were infinitely small.

"«Excuse me.»"

Storal, T'Kasha and T'Neri perked on hearing that voice, and then they turned to see a Starfleet lieutenant standing behind them. Human-descent, she had curly dark brown hair and blue eyes on a classically Romanesque-shaped face. She wore operations gold on her uniform, with her unit patch identifying her as a member of the crew of the U.S.S. _Terra Nova_, a Danube-class runabout that was assigned to Starfleet's resupply group working out of Gander Spaceport on the Island of Newfoundland. "«Yes, Lieutenant?»" Storal asked, surprised to hear this human speak his native tongue with such flair.

The lieutenant raised her hand in the parted-finger salute. "«I apologise, but I couldn't help but overhear your conversation,»" she stated. "«Perhaps I can be of assistance in helping your daughter satisfy her curiosity about that woman.»"

Both Storal and T'Kasha looked surprised while a childish look of satisfaction crossed T'Neri's face, though all three responded to the lieutenant's hand salute. "«Would that not be violating her privacy, Lieutenant?»" the healer then inquired.

A smile. "«Not really given that I myself am a Questor, Healer . . . and I don't recognise that woman at all,»" the lieutenant stated. "«Here, let's move this to a more private location. I have a jammer that blocks out translator units in a three-metre radius of my person, but there's the chance there might be others versed in your language here today. This way.»"

The Vulcans immediately complied . . .

* * *

Minutes later . . .

"She doesn't match up to _**any**_ known biometric scan done on any Questor native to the worlds of the Federation. To say anything of all the neighbouring powers, Chris."

Christina McPherson blinked as she took that in, and then she sighed. "Okay, so where DOES she come from?" she asked. "The Confederation, Rose?"

"That's considered a 'neighbouring power,' Chris," Rosemary McPherson, Christina's twin sister and a nursing lieutenant now assigned as part of the medical support staff at Marine Base Petawawa, replied. Storal and his family had learned that both of their hosts were Phaëton-form Questors; the McPherson twins - along with a dozen of their former shipmates from the U.S.S. _Lexington_ - had Crossed into the Fold twenty years ago thanks to a terrible outbreak of Klingon Imperial plague on Starbase 604 which had almost decimated the whole station's staff hadn't help come just in time.

"Is this of a concern?" T'Kasha asked.

"It's of a great concern, Lady T'Kasha," Rosemary answered. Her hair was a little longer than her sister's; that, the different unit patches over the nametags, the different initials for their given names and the different department colours on their uniforms were the only way they could be told apart. "Part of the reason we're able to keep those who would fear and hate all those of us who have embraced the Fold and become like us is that we don't do anything to really stick out to other people. And we do everything to make sure that we know or can quickly identify sisters from other places so - if required - we can help them in their time of need." She pointed to the screen of the private viewing room they had all occupied. "That woman there doesn't come up ANYWHERE on our records."

"Have you scanned her?" Storal wondered.

"A passive scan; she wouldn't have sensed it."

"The results?"

"She's a Terran-form Questor. Her accent is old British - we think she may hail from either Devon, Dorset or Somerset; she doesn't have the more noticeable accents of the Cornish or the Welsh - and given what we've monitored of what she's said so far, we can believe what your daughter concluded when she overheard that woman say in the auditorium that this person is a clear contemporary of Ms. Pannan."

"Or what the Lady Roy originally was," T'Kasha noted.

"Indeed," Rosemary stated.

"Have you speculated on who she might actually be?" Storal asked.

The twins shook their heads. "We have no idea whatsoever, Healer," Christine stated. "Most military personnel records from that time period were all lost thanks to various attacks on national military headquarters complexes throughout the Third World War. If indeed our strange visitor is from Britain, any hopes of identifying her will be dashed quite quickly; the records of the British armed forces were eradicated thanks to the brief time the Optimal Movement held control over the nation in the 2070s."

"What would you recommend we do to ascertain this person's identity?" the healer then inquired. "Much that I am uncomfortable in intruding on the private life of a sentient being without just cause, I can understand the requirement for caution given recent events on Earth and elsewhere." His eyes focused on the image of the woman in question, who was standing in the memorial room listing all the dead of the various regiments and battalions who had been based in Petawawa during the Third World War. "There is also the matter of Colonel Thorsen and his allies." At the McPherson twins' shocked looks - to even SAY the name of one of the infamous Optimum colonels on Phaëton was seen as vulgar - he added, "A soul-shade of him attempted to hijack the _Enterprise_ on Stardate 43922 to attempt entry into the black hole designated TNC-65813."

Christine took a moment to absorb that. "Are you saying that a member of the main group that Colonel Jameston fought during World War Three actually survived to TODAY?"

"Indeed," Storal stated. "I cannot state how exactly a person such as Colonel Thorsen was able to survive to such an extreme date for a human; I was never briefed on the exact circumstances of that incident. I would suggest that you contact Captain Picard directly to obtain that information, Lieutenant McPherson."

The twins exchanged a look. Observing them, Storal was quick to sense the slight push on his own mind's psionic defences indicating that the two Phaëtons before him - who would not have lost any of their own psionic abilities when they became Questors, the Vulcan healer had learned recently on being fully briefed about the race of now-synthetic sentients living peaceful and productive lives throughout the Federation as a whole - were mentally communicating with each other. After a moment, the pressure on his mind ended, and then Rosemary gave him an apologetic look. "I'm sorry if that hurt you in any way, Healer," she then stated with a bow of her head.

"You need not apologise, Lieutenant," Storal stated. "May I enquire . . .?"

"We were discussing other options - options we believe you may not have ever been briefed upon - about ascertaining our newly-arrived sister's identity," Christine stated. "If you'll give us a few moments, we'll contact a person - a Questor herself in Starfleet Command - who can better assist us in this matter. Please excuse me."

She rose and then stepped out of the room. "If you want, I can ask a friend to let your daughter finish the tour of the museum," Rosemary then offered.

"It would be appreciated," T'Kasha said as T'Neri nodded . . .

* * *

"Everyone hasn't given up hope on any of them . . . "

Standing in the middle of the Hall of the Missing, the traveller could only sigh as she took in the faces of over two hundred people - all of them female, she had been surprised to note - whose final fates had yet to be properly determined. All of them were participants in the Battle of Space Station Perfection on Friday 19 May 2079, known officially as Operation: Sundown. Over a hundred of them - including the leader of the attack on the last stronghold of the Optimum Movement on Earth, Lieutenant-Colonel Glorianna T. "Roy" Jameston - were depicted in Canadian Forces CADPAT uniforms, their sandy-tan berets marking them as members of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment regardless of their proper regiment or branch of service. Scattered amongst these beautiful portraits were pictures of personnel from a dozen other nations, all volunteers from the elite of the special operations community active at the time CSOR was making war on the Optimum Movement and its allies across the planet. Noting the roughly two dozen people in British Army Number 8 Temperate Combat Dress - the Disruptive Pattern Material camouflage on their jackets being quite noticeably different from the Canadian Disruptive Pattern temperate woodland style worn by their friends; the British style had a lot of brown in them while the Canadians always leaned towards various shades of green - the traveller could only smile in admiration at these people, who had fought to the bitter end for what they believed in.

The traveller soon noted that all the people memorialised in the Hall of the Missing had their portraits all mounted in alphabetical order by family name, which meant that she had to walk around quite a bit to read the individual names of the people portrayed here. As she did that, she was quick to sense she wasn't alone in this room now; the young Vulcan girl whom she had encountered in the auditorium had come in to look around, accompanied by a Starfleet lieutenant wearing an old Royal Canadian Navy ship's crest over her nametag. Taking a moment to briefly glance at them, the traveller relaxed herself as she turned back to gaze on one particular picture, her eyes locking in on the crowned stringed bugle of the Rifles on her dark rifle-green beret, which was standard headdress for members of that regiment. Pausing to gaze on the face, the traveller gasped. "Sergeant-Major Jones . . .?"

She felt tears in her eyes as her mind turned back over three centuries . . .

* * *

_Bulford Camp (thirty kilometres northwest of Southampton), Monday 10 March 2042, early morning . . ._

_ "Did I hear this right, Colonel? You're actually pulling the pin?"_

_ Adrik Thorsen perked on hearing that surprised question, and then he turned to gaze on the middle-aged woman that had now stepped into his office, located in one of the large administration buildings overlooking the regimental lines of the 4th Battalion of the Rifles. Surprised to see that Warrant Officer Class One Sarah Jones - the first woman to ever become a regimental sergeant-major in any infantry unit in the British Army - looked almost on the point of tears, the lieutenant-colonel who was in command of the 4th Battalion tried not to look too guilty. Even if he knew deep in his heart this was the proper decision to make as he charted his life's course, there were strong feelings he had for the people he had served with since he had graduated years before from Sandhurst as a wet-cheeked and ignorant subaltern. "Yes, I am retiring, RSM," he stated, addressing the native of Cornwall with the traditional short-hand form of her position title. "I've done my time earning the King's shilling and I feel I need to do something else with my life before I get too old."_

_ Jones took that in, and then she assumed an at-ease position before his desk. "Well, the lads are going to be sad to see you leave, sir," she admitted. "You were one of the best COs many of them ever had since they came into the Regiment. Who's taking your place? Is someone being sent in from Winchester?" That city in Hampshire, twenty-five kilometres east-southeast of Bulford, was where the Regimental Headquarters depot for the seven battalion-strong regiment was located. "Or are we actually getting someone who's re__-__badging in from another regiment?" She tried not to frown too much on asking that second question; hanging onto one's regimental identity - especially in the infantry - was a very important thing for people in the British Army to do, thus actually _switching_ regimental affiliation was quite frowned upon._

_ "Well, Colonel Merchant is re__-__badging," Thorsen stated before a smile crossed his face. "But from the Twenty-second Regiment over in Credenhill."_

_ Jones gaped. "He's SAS? Bloody good, sir!" She then perked as she remembered something. "You did time with Sterling's boys, didn't you?"_

_ A sigh. "Back when I was a captain during the Fawkes Rebellion."_

_ The senior warrant officer then winced. The Fawkes Rebellion - so called because of the penchant of the rebels to wear Guy Fawkes masks to disguise themselves - had nearly torn Britain apart nine years ago, just as the Bell Riots had done to the Americans years earlier. "Sorry, sir," she apologised. "I didn't mean to . . . "_

_ Thorsen shook his head. "It was a terrible time for all involved, RSM. Leave it be," he stated. "Even if people didn't agree with what the government did at the time, we had orders to obey and . . . " A sigh. "We obeyed them. Hopefully in the future, decisions will be made to ensure that sort of thing never happens again."_

_ A nod. "I hope so, too, sir. So how will the change of command go?"_

_ "I'd like it nice and simple; when Colonel Merchant gets here, we'll hash out the details," the colonel stated. "As optimal as you can make it, RSM."_

_ She perked. "'Optimal?' It's not a bloody computer program, sir!" she said before straightening herself to attention. "Excuse me, sir."_

_ He nodded as she smartly stepped out of his room, and then he relaxed before turning to gaze out the window at the barracks grounds around him. "It should be, Sarah," Thorsen whispered. "Everything in life should be optimal . . . "_

* * *

The Petawawa Military Museum . . .

"You never realised that, did you, Sarah?" the traveller whispered as she gazed on the picture of the former regimental sergeant-major of the 4th Battalion of the Rifles, identified here as being the senior enlisted advisor for Operation: Sundown. "That at the time, we all saw the societies we all once swore to serve and protect falling apart around us. That no solution the 'experts' living at that time came up with was helping society advance forward. Too many people were desperate for order and safety." She closed her eyes. "Still, you did the right thing. We all foolishly believed that we had the right solution . . . when the TRUE right solution was still so far out of our grasp . . . "

"You served with her."

The traveller jolted, and then she turned around, looking down to see the young Vulcan girl standing close to her, gazing on the older woman with a look of simple curiosity. After noting that the lieutenant that had been in the room had withdrawn from this space to give them privacy, she then blinked as she considered how to respond to the young lady - though she was cursing herself for not keeping her words truly to herself - and then the traveller sighed before turning back to gaze on the picture of Sarah Jones. "Are all your species blessed with such sensitive hearing?" she asked.

"In comparison to your ancestral species, that is correct," the girl stated before she gazed around the room. "We are alone. Lieutenant Sebastian - who is like yourself, though a Phaëton by birth - will ensure privacy as we converse."

"And what do you believe I am?"

"You are a Questor."

Silence.

The traveller gazed down once more on the young girl. "I did not realise my kind were so well-known in this part of the galaxy."

"Actually, knowledge of the existence of the Questors is deliberately kept obscure - at the request of elders of your race from many of the Federation worlds - to ensure those who would seek out the chance at becoming effectively immortal would be deterred from causing most undue harm onto those of your kind."

A chuckle. "We are not immortal, young lady. Extremely long-lived - on the average of ten thousand years according to those of my sisters I have interacted with in the nearly three centuries since I Crossed into the Fold - but not immortal."

"I was unaware of that," the young girl stated. "Do you physically age?"

"No. I get to look like this for the rest of my life." She waved to her face in emphasis. "Though I might put on some weight if I ever elect to have a baby."

That made the girl's eyebrows shoot right up into the bangs of her hair. "I was unaware that Questors could naturally bear offspring. No instances of such has ever been recorded, no doubt because of the complete absence of males with compatible genetic makeup," she then stated. "At least within the worlds of the Federation. Is that not the same situation where you currently reside? Are there male Questors?"

"No, there are not. But the race of the people who aided in my Crossing into the Fold developed a form of parthenogenesis which works just as well. It's a medical procedure, but there are Questor children. Who are born naturally, mature naturally - in the same manner as organics of their mothers' birth-race - until they reach an optimal state of maturity and health, and then they are frozen in time."

"Fascinating." She then perked. "May I inquire as to your name?"

A sigh. "I would prefer not to release my proper name just yet. But you can call me 'Adrie.' It's short for 'Adrienne.' And you?"

"I am T'Neri, daughter of Storal, son of Spiak." She then raised her hand in the parted-finger salute. "Peace and long life, Lady Adrienne."

The traveller blinked, and then she raised her hand to return that salute. "_Mehe nakkhet ur-seveh_, Young Mistress T'Neri."

She tried not to grin on seeing T'Neri gape at her . . .

* * *

Nearby . . .

"Oh, my God! That IS Adrik Thorsen . . .!"

"Or an effective 'daughter' of his!"

"What the hell is that . . . _person_ doing here?"

"Calm down, everyone."

At the cool voice of the fleet admiral seated at the head of the table, the others in the room all relaxed. "So how could _Adrik Thorsen_ - or even a daughter of his - still be alive?" Nyota Uhura then demanded. "And what's she doing _here_?"

"That's hard to say at this time," Ky'los Shyrae replied. All the people in the room now - save for the McPherson twins, Storal and one other person - were dressed in civilian clothes, chosen mostly for their not being flashy enough to attract attention. As most of the people who had come to Petawawa at Christine McPherson's request were involved in one way or another with Starfleet Intelligence or Section 31, wearing things that did not attract people's attention was paramount. "If she was created at the time Thorsen ran across the Grigari around the time of his involvement in the murder of Zefram Cochrane's wife Monica on Alpha Centauri III in 2117, then she's been probably separated from Earth for well over two centuries. No doubt, she might be here to learn more about what has happened in her absence. And given how she reacted on seeing that particular picture in the Hall of the Missing . . . " She then hummed before gazing over at the other person in uniform, a Marine Corps major. "Major Harris, who exactly is that person which attracted Ms. Thorsen's attention?"

"Warrant Officer Class One Sarah D. Jones, British Army, Fleet Admiral," Major Savannah Harris, the deputy commanding officer of the 3rd Infantry Battalion (Royal Canadian Regiment) of the Starfleet Marines and the only Questor in the unit, replied. "Affiliated with the Rifles since she joined up in 2015; she topped off as Regimental Sergeant-Major of the 4th Battalion before she resigned from the service in 2048. She was later recalled to active duty by Her Majesty's Government, then assigned as part of Task Force Vimy, the British team assigned to the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, in 2068, three years before Thorsen's people overthrew the government and established the 'Optimal Republic of Great Britain.' As we all suspect, she Crossed into the Fold sometime well before she joined Task Force Vimy; the fact that a woman who would have been in her mid-EIGHTIES was involved in that attack is proof enough to confirm Colonel Jameston sought out sisters then serving or who had served in the militaries of Earth at the time to help finally eradicate the Optimum and put a stop to World War Three. As to the exact time she Crossed into the Fold - to say anything of what happened to her after she vanished from the station, just all the other 'ladies from hell' that fought under the colonel's command - I can't answer that, ma'am. Only Colonel Jameston could . . . " A shake of the head. "If her memory hadn't gone AWOL like it did."

Rueful chuckles from all the non-Vulcans in the room. "What would Ms. Thorsen's opinions and beliefs actually be in this instance?" T'Kasha asked.

"Well, from what we know thanks to Captain Picard's post-action report of that incident at TNC-65813, the colonel still held high respect for military structure. Which Starfleet still employs," Shyrae noted. "And while it is known that CSOR . . . " - here, the fleet admiral said the short-form for the Canadian Special Operations Regiment by the mixed alphabetic/phonetic pronunciation of those letters, **Sea-Soar** - " . . . never operated directly against Thorsen's people during the time the Optimum was in control of the United Kingdom, they were involved in training the opposition forces under Sir John Burke and his friends while they were in Ireland helping the local military forces keep Optimum infiltrators suppressed throughout the 2070s." A hum. "I wonder if they ever met before he resigned his commission in 2042."

"Who?" Uhura asked.

"Adrik Thorsen and Roy Jameston."

"It's possible, ma'am," Major Harris noted. "Colonel Jameston's regiment was affiliated with Colonel Thorsen's regiment, the Rifles. There were times - usually at important anniversaries - when personnel from the Patricias were invited to England to parade with various regiments there and vice-versa. If Colonel Jameston was a part of that, she would have been quartered by a host regiment. Why not the Rifles?"

The others nodded. "We can't confirm it through Roy, so we have to ask Adrie," Lieutenant-General Rhonda Halloran, the senior Questor in the Marine Corps and Shyrae's on-again/off-again intimate companion, said as she crossed her arms.

"You won't probe her mind telepathically?" T'Kasha asked.

"If either the Lieutenants McPherson here did that, she would sense it right away, Ms. T'Kasha," Halloran warned. "It's the down-side to allowing psionic species to Cross into the Fold; non-psionic Questors become very sensitive to even a distant mind-probe like what a Phaëton can perform. We want to keep this meeting peaceful."

"Logical," Storal noted . . .

* * *

"So you have met Vulcans before?"

The traveller nodded. "A couple of times in the late 2060s," she explained as she and T'Neri moved to sit on one of the benches in the middle of the Hall of the Missing. "I never really got to know them very well, but I did remember that greeting they gave each other in their own language. Was it pronounced correctly?"

"Indeed it was. I compliment you for your accent," T'Neri noted. "When exactly did you Cross into the Fold, Lady? And who assisted you in this matter?"

"A woman named Wirk'li. It happened in 2110," the older woman answered, and then she smiled as she noted the girl's curious look. "She is of a species that call themselves the Grigari." A frown then turned their race. "Though most of that species are not optimal. You may have heard of that particular species."

"I have," the young Vulcan said. "A race seen mostly by other races as pirates, though they profess to be simple traders who possess the secrets of eternal life and wish to share such secrets with other species. Unfortunately, their nanotechnology ends up causing quite hideous alterations to those who make use of it to prolong their existence." She then looked away. "When I read of the Grigari, I found it most . . . disconcerting to gaze upon images of those who allowed themselves to be so augmented."

"Yes, it is an ugly process. I considered obtaining that type of augmentation when I encountered them back in 2110." The traveller then smiled as she gazed on her hand. "Wirk'li saved me from that option and gave me something much better. As she has done since she herself Crossed into the Fold a half-millennia ago. Then again, I cannot blame her for seeking to do that to all of her race. Their . . . " A shudder raced through her as she recalled what she had seen on Gen Grigar. "Their fascination with allowing themselves to become cyborgs is not optimal. And at the current state of conversion, there will be no pure-organic Grigari left within two generations."

"That would be most unfortunate," T'Neri stated.

"Indeed, it is clearly not optimal."

The young girl then perked. "You were once of the Optimum Movement."

The traveller blinked, and then she smiled. "Noticed, didn't you?"

"You make use of the word 'optimal' quite frequently," T'Neri noted, and then she gazed curiously at her. "How do you define being 'optimal?'"

"As I am now, T'Neri," the older woman said, a content smile crossing her face. T'Neri then watched as the smile slipped as she added, "When I was organic, I was one of the first in Britain to accept what the Optimum believed was the best course for humanity to take. We were in the midst of a giant global warming crisis. There were too many people to feed. Irreplaceable resources were being exhausted. And no one was coming up with ways to resolve all these issues and make things better for all of humanity." A sigh. "I listened to Phillip Green when he first began preaching his ideas that drove the Freedom Rangers . . . and, at that time, what he said made sense to me. So I helped form the British branch of the Optimum Movement in the Pursuit of Perfection. And never looked back." She gazed once more onto her hand. "Until I woke up one day aboard Wirk'li's ship . . . "

* * *

_Somewhere near Alpha Centauri (Earth-date: Thursday 6 November 2110) . . ._

_ She could smell flowers._

_ The air smelt so fresh here._

_ No smoke or any of the stenches of decay._

Where am I?

_After taking several deep breaths of the rich, clean air, a pair of blue eyes then opened as the being who had been born Adrik Thorsen found herself gazing at a ceiling full of geometric designs that were quite alien to her - she had never been good at mathematics, nor had sought to pursue continued studies in that subject in the wake of her becoming part of the Optimum - yet seemed so beautiful. So perfect._

_ So . . . optimal._

_ She then blinked as something came to her._

My eye! I can see out of both eyes again!

_Relief and joy then flooded her soul . . ._

_ "You are awake."_

_ Blinking on hearing that curiously accented voice make that statement in very crisp English, she then sat up, turning to her right . . ._

_ . . . and then she gaped on seeing a tall humanoid being - in fact, said being was far taller than what was considered normal for Earth! - seated in a simple yet comfortable chair nearby. With skin as crimson as poppy flowers, she possessed no hair on her head, yet looked quite acceptably human, even coming with breasts and a body that - were the colonel many years younger and more willing to give vent to the primal urges of her youth - she would gladly want to make love to for hours on end. The alien's eyes were a bright chestnut shade, slit like a cat's, though they were now wide and expressive as she gazed in the direction of the just-woken Adrik Thorsen. She was dressed in robes that flattered her body's shape but wouldn't be seen on Earth as blatantly sexual. After noting that, the just-woken Terran then asked, "Who are you?"_

_ A smile. "I am Wirk'li of the planet Gen Grigar, Adrik Thorsen. You know of my race as the 'Grigari.'" She ignored the Terran's dropped jaw as she added, "Others native to my home world are busy attempting to spread their wares to natives of your home planet and their expanding colonies. You contacted a ship to be augmented with nanoprobes to avert your eventual death before you sought forth to accomplish your life's work and seek the man who developed your culture's first hyperluminal-capable system so that you could transform it into a military weapon. I stepped in save you from making a mistake that would have cost you everything you hold dear."_

_ "The technology was necessary. My people's technology was not sufficient enough to allow my life to continue, to say anything of allowing me to continue my quest."_

_ "And you would have died," Wirk'li stated. "You have no idea where Zefram has gone. Space is enormously vast, Adrik, even for advanced species such as mine. Where would you begin the search to find Zefram? If he is still alive, of course. And as you sought your opponent, your body would disintegrate more and more until nothing of your original body would remain. And when you lost that . . . you would die. And all that would remain is a machine consciousness which will plunge forward and continue to seek whatever it is you yourself sought. And it will fail to locate it . . . and continue to exist for eternity. Frozen, unable to evolve, no longer able to think for itself . . . and ultimately unable to seek a true _optimal_ existence."_

_ The breath caught in Adrik's throat on hearing that last statement. "You were tricked, Adrik. Like so many others throughout the years, both on Gen Grigar and beyond, have been tricked," her host added. "But I can understand your quest to seek out an optimal existence. It is something many of _all_ sentient species seek out. Personal physical and mental perfection. Or as close to it as one could strive dependant on one's circumstances, one's home culture and one's own resource base. It is a laudable goal. But your approach was quite inefficient and non-optimal. If there are those out there who care not for such a quest, ignore their existence. Do not decide their fates; it is a waste of time and energy you could better devote to self-improvement. Fate - uncompromising, uncaring Fate - will deal with such lazy beings on its own." She then raised one of her hands. "I was like you once. And I might have sought out the nanotechnology to gain 'eternal life.'" Adrik was quick to sense the quotes around that phrase. "Then, two of your centuries ago, I was given a different option."_

_ With that, she pulled out a knife and jabbed it _hard_ into the palm of her hand. As Adrik watched in surprised shock, Wirk'li then withdrew the blade, turning the hand around to show the wound, now gushing a deep brownish shade of blood. "Watch."_

_ Adrik watched . . ._

_ . . . and then felt her jaw drop as the blood STOPPED flowing, then began to sink into the surrounding tissue as the wound began to heal. "What . . .?"_

_ "You cannot be half-organic and half-machine, Adrik," Wirk'li said, totally not bothered by any sensation of pain from the wound she had caused herself. "You must be totally one . . . or totally the other. No one can truly exist in a half-and-half state between the two. Fortunately for me and many like me, we have discovered a way to become machines so life-like that - save for the most accurate of quantum-level scanners - we are no different than our organic brethren. Those such as I are known as 'Questors.' There are many such as we, not just on Gen Grigar but elsewhere across the galaxy and perhaps beyond. And now . . . you are a Questor, Adrik Thorsen."_

_ Silence._

_ More silence._

_ Still more silence._

_ And then . . ._

_ "I am . . . optimal?"_

_ A light smile crossed the Grigari-form Questor's face on seeing the look of joy cross her guest's face. "Not yet, Adrik. But if you will allow us to aide you in better understanding what we have let you become, you will achieve what you have ultimately sought for so much of your life. You can and will become as optimal as you will desire. And then - if you desire - you can proceed forth to help others achieve what you have achieved. In a much more optimal way than you employed in the past."_

_ Adrik blinked, and then she nodded. "I would desire that, Madame Wirk'li."_

_ "Then let us see to it you are properly clothed. You are shorter than what is normal for Grigari, but I believe we can find suitable garments."_

_ The Terran-form Questor nodded, and then she moved to slip out of bed . . ._

_ . . . before her eyes cast down onto her nude body._

**Her **_body . . .?_

_ "Um . . . "_

_ Wirk'li gazed at her, an apologetic look on her face. "The gender reassignment is unavoidable, Adrik. But do not be concerned. I myself was male before I Crossed into the Fold. You will find it quite easy to adjust as time proceeds forward. Now, come. Others wish to meet you."_

_ Adrik blinked, and then she moved to follow her host . . ._

* * *

The Petawawa Military Museum . . .

" . . . and so I have spent the last 263 years in not only better understanding what I have become but helping those of my sisters from Gen Grigar and other planets they associate with research ways to better improve our existences so we may all become more optimal according to our own needs and desires," the traveller finished.

"What has brought you here to Earth then?" T'Neri wondered.

A sigh. "Strange as this will sound, homesickness. Curiosity as well," the older woman admitted before she gave the young Vulcan girl a knowing look. "If you are concerned that I might try to instigate a modern repetition of what I was involved with three centuries ago, Young Mistress T'Neri, don't worry. I have had all that time to reflect on the mistakes I made back in the Twenty-first Century, right from the day I listened to Phil Green's proposals that would later make him establish the Freedom Rangers. And the greatest mistake I made in that time was believing that I could decide for others if they were worthy of being judged as 'optimal' or 'non-optimal.'"

"Were there those who refused the Lady Wirk'li's offer to allow them to Cross into the Fold, Lady Adrienne?" T'Neri then inquired.

A nod. "Oh, yes. Many times. Usually by those who saw the detriments of becoming a Questor. Sadly, none of Wirk'li's people ever elected to live a 'natural' existence. It was always augmentation with cybernetics." The traveller then gazed down at the young Vulcan. "At least for those, we saved them. As I was saved."

T'Neri nodded. "Such is a proper and logical action, Lady Adrienne. That ensures the full embrace of Entropy upon your benefactor's species will remain at bay until such time as male Questors could be created and thus restore the natural evolution of the Grigari. I do not believe those such as the Lady Wirk'li wish to continue to live in a society that is forced to resort to female-only same-gender relationships to allow families to be created for the benefit of the young."

"My, you are quite knowledgeable . . . "

The traveller's voice was cut off as the door leading into the Hall of the Missing then opened, revealing a single human male in normal clothing that seemed to be in style for what had once been addressed as the "Western world" in Adrik Thorsen's day. As she gazed at him, her eyes then went wide. "John . . .?" she gasped.

* * *

Nearby . . .

"Who the devil is he?" Rhonda Halloran snapped.

"Major Harris!"

Savannah Harris spun around as a wide-eyed gunnery sergeant from her battalion burst into the room. "What is it, Gunny?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, internal sensors are picking up a micro-nuclear weapon inside the museum complex!" the gunnery sergeant declared. "It's in the Hall of the Missing!"

People's eyes went wide, and then they spun to gaze on the monitor . . .

* * *

Noting the presence of a woman and an alien child in this place that honoured the blood enemies of the movement that came within a hair's breadth of purifying the whole human race, the man snarled as he reached into his jacket to draw a rather wicked-looking knife similar to a Klingon _d'k tang_. Seeing that, the traveller sneered as she bolted up, lunging over the chair to drop down right in front of him. Seeing she was moving to attack, he roared as he lunged, the blade aimed at her heart . . .

. . . only to cry out as her hand snared his wrist, then with a well-practiced take-down manoeuvre that Adrik Thorsen had learned years ago during his basic officer's training at the Infantry Battle School in the Welsh town of Brecon, she twisted that limb hard about, snapping the lower arm bones and dislocating the elbow with the power she possessed. His cry of shock turned into a shriek of pain as his brain registered what she had done to him, but before he could do anything to throw her off him, her foot then shot up to slam hard into his groin. "One thing about not being a man I don't miss anymore!" she said with a laugh as he dropped to his knees, groaning.

The door to the Hall burst open, revealing several people in combat uniforms, phaser rifles in hand. "_**MA'AM, STEP AWAY FROM HIM!**_" the corporal in charge of the small detail barked as he and his companions levelled their weapons on the attacker.

She let go just as their weapons shrilled to life, sending three stun bolts into the man's back to have him drop unconscious to the ground. Before she could demand what was going on, one of the riflemen lunged over, grabbing the dazed man by his broken arm, and then he flipped him over. That allowed a tubular device the size of a bottle of soda pop from Thorsen's day to drop out of the inside of his jacket. "Found it!" he barked out to his companions as he drew out something from his equipment belt to place down on the tube. He then tapped the communicator badge on his left chest. "Security Team Six to _Terra Nova_," he barked out. "Bomb disposal tracker is on the micro-nuke the terrorist brought in here! Get this damned thing out of here!"

"Energizing!" a woman's voice called back.

The tube disappeared in a shower of energy. By then, T'Neri's mother had raced in, followed by several more riflemen. "Mother!" T'Neri called out.

She ran into T'Kasha's arms. "Are you well, my daughter?" the older woman asked as she gazed at her child, ignoring the burst of emotion T'Neri had displayed.

A nod. "I was alarmed, but the Lady Adrienne's actions saved my life. I have not suffered any injury and the culprit was stunned by the rifle team."

A communicator chirped. "_Terra Nova_ to Security Team Six."

"Team Six, Kolbe," the corporal called back.

"The micro-nuke has been beamed into deep space and detonated. No damage."

The corporal nodded. "Aye-aye, ma'am. Thanks for the help. Kolbe out."

As he relaxed, the traveller gazed on him. "What's a 'micro-nuke?'"

"Micro-sized uranium-powered tactical nuclear bomb," the corporal said as he depowered his phaser rifle. "Standard yield is about 70 terajoules."

Confusion crossed the older woman's face. "What's that in TNT equivalent?"

"About the same energy output of the atomic bomb the Americans dropped on Hiroshima in 1945," a strange voice then called out.

The traveller turned as a woman - whom she automatically sensed was a Questor - walked into the room. On seeing her, the Marines present snapped to attention, the corporal of the detail giving her a salute under arms; left palm facing the ground, he crossed his arm over his chest to tap the side of his index finger on the housing of his rifle. "General Halloran, ma'am!" the corporal called out. "Welcome to Petawawa!"

"Thank you, Corporal," the chief of operations of the Starfleet Marine Corps said with an approving nod. "Gentlebeings, take the prisoner and place him in a brig cell. Make sure his arm is taken care of. I'll arrange for the interrogation."

"Make sure you search him for cyanide capsules," the traveller then advised. "Not to mention injectors of hypnotic hysteria." Noting Halloran's questioning look, she added, "He's John Cabal, General Halloran. Former captain in the British Territorial Army in the 2040s and 2050s; he once was a member of the London Regiment while he was serving in New Scotland Yard in civilian life. He later became a member of the Optimum Movement that took over the country two decades later." A sigh. "Or he could be some type of clone or some other being. I can't say how he's been alive for so long."

The general nodded. "You heard the lady, Corporal. Make sure of it."

"Aye, ma'am!" the corporal said. "Mowat, secure Mrs. T'Kasha and her child!"

"Aye, Corporal!" one of the riflemen said as he headed over.

As the stunned prisoner was taken out of the room, T'Neri came over to gaze closely at the traveller. "Please be well, Lady Adrienne. It would be most agreeable if we were to meet again." She raised her hand in salute. "Peace and long life."

"Go with your mother, Young Mistress," the older woman bade as she raised her hand to return that salute. "And I would love to see you again. May you live long and prosper."

She nodded, and then followed her mother and Private Mowat out of the room, thus leaving the traveller alone with Rhonda Halloran. The two gazed on each other, and then the Marine general sighed. "I don't know whether to say 'Welcome home' or advise you to head back to Grigari space, Colonel Thorsen," she warned as she gave the traveller a knowing look. "The part of you that stayed a man and accepted the Grigari nanotech caused the Federation some problems, both in 2267 and not more than seven years ago."

"I neither claim the rank nor seek to cause trouble, General," the traveller said. "I only hope my 'other-self' didn't cause any permanent damage."

"No, but his obsession with Zefram Cochrane nearly paid off. Fortunately, when he was caught in our time, he was disposed of by the starship that was involved in that incident, quite permanently." A sigh. "Sadly, the professor didn't survive."

The other woman blinked as she took that in, and then she breathed out. "In the last century, I've never really thought about Zefram." A tired smile then crossed her face. "Wirk'li was right all along. The part of me that took those nanoprobes wound up becoming a mindless monster willing to do anything to seize the secrets of the warp bomb. Which, long ago, Zefram tried to convince me simply couldn't exist."

"I never studies warp physics at the Academy, so I can't confirm or deny that," Halloran stated, rolling her eyes. "I'm like our sister right there." She then pointed.

The traveller turned . . .

. . . and then went white on seeing whose picture the general was indicating.

"_**ROY?**_"

The general chuckled. "Come with me, Ms. Thorsen. We've got things to talk about. And there're some people who definitely would want to meet you."

* * *

Outside the Museum building, three hours later . . .

"It's always nice to meet a Vulcan that appreciates ice cream."

T'Neri tried not to grin as she took the cone from the vendor's hand. "I have always found the taste to be quite aesthetically pleasing to consume," she admitted. "It was one of the many things I learned to appreciate while I was on the _Enterprise_."

The vendor chuckled. "_Enterprise_, eh? A good name for a good ship! It's a pity kids can't go into space anymore." A grumble. "Damned Dominion . . . "

The young Vulcan nodded. "They are quite irrational and illogical."

"And not optimal."

T'Keri turned, and then fought hard to hide a delightful grin from crossing her face on noticing the woman now walking up to join her. "Lady Adrienne."

Adrienne Thorsen gazed on the vendor. "What flavour is she having?"

"Evergreen Surprise," the elderly man - who had the bearing of a soldier; the Terran-form Questor who had lived among alien sisters for nearly three centuries was quick to note his marksman's eyes - stated. "Never tried it before?"

"Please," she said.

The ice cream was prepared, then handed over and paid for. The two women then proceeded over to a bench overlooking the place where the Petawawa River flowed into the Ottawa River at the southeast corner of the base grounds, with the rolling hills of Île aux Allumettes just beyond the wide river basin dividing the physical territory of Ontario and Québec in this part of Canada. Sitting down, they relaxed as they moved to enjoy their ice cream. "It's minty," Adrienne stated as a smile crossed her face. "Like the air on Wirk'li's ship. I would consider this . . . optimal." She then gazed on T'Neri as the young girl stared wide-eyed at her, and then she winked.

The child giggled, and then she caught herself. "Lady Adrienne, please . . . "

"I won't tell anyone," she vowed.

A nod and an impish grin before the young child was able to regain control over herself. "Thank you," T'Neri said. "Did they find out who that man was?"

"Two Phaëton lieutenants that were here at the time mind-scanned him," Adrienne said. "He has all the memories of Captain John Cabal, formerly of the London Regiment of the British Territorial Army in the Twenty-first Century . . . but the body was clearly cloned for him. Right now, he's in the custody of Starfleet Intelligence as he is probed for all information he might have about other Optimum survivors who could still be 'alive' in this day and age." A sigh. "According to one of the people who mind-probed him, every time his brain was replicated into a new body, he lost more and more of his sanity until he finally snapped - not that it didn't take him much to do that - then decided to come back here and strike at anything that reminded him of what he 'lost' all those decades ago when he and his friends were driven off the planet." A shake of the head. "I also confirmed several things I wanted to know."

"What things?"

A sigh. "My name is Adrienne Thorsen, T'Neri. I was born Adrik Thorsen in Bristol in the year 2002. You are aware of what I was back then, correct?"

A simple nod. "Yes."

Adrienne breathed out. "Over the years I worked to press the Optimum's goals, I became particularly obsessed with Zefram Cochrane. Before he flew his ship from that silo in Montana in 2063 and met up with your people, there had been an accident on the Moon that involved some research into creating the superimpellor drive system. What you call 'warp drive' today." She paused before continuing, "At the Kashishōwa research facility on the Moon in 2054, there was an accident there. It turned out to be a runaway continuum distortion effect - a wormhole - but some people at the time, myself included, believed it was an explosive device that was powered by the warp fields Zefram was trying to create. And when the second phase of World War Two got underway in earnest in 2071 and those who opposed us began to defeat us on the field . . . "

"You sought the professor out to create such a device," T'Neri finished.

A nod. "In the early evening of Tuesday 21 June 2078, my people had captured Zefram and several of the leaders of the British Royal Resistance Force. I hoped I could use people such as Sir John Burke and his daughter Monica to force Zefram to give up the secrets of the warp bomb. However, elements of Sir John's group caught us at Battersea Stadium and affected a rescue. I was nearly burned alive when their escape craft took off from the stadium." She shuddered as she remembered that fight. "I was pulled out of there, barely alive and vowing vengeance against Zefram for defying me. But by that time, the government I had helped organise was collapsing. I myself lost my eye in the fight, then lost my arms and legs after the burnt wreck that was my body was pulled out the stadium." Noting T'Neri's uncomfortable look, she sighed before slurping up her ice cream. "I apologise. I did not realise this would affect you."

"It is . . . disturbing to contemplate," she admitted. "What happened afterward?"

"Well, medicine had evolved by then to allow cybernetic parts to be applied to multiple-limb amputees like myself, so I was able to eventually move around. This was at the time of Operation: Sundown. The attack on Space Station Perfection." Adrienne smirked. "When I had heard the station was destroyed and the whole Optimum leadership had been wiped out, I felt so alone, T'Neri. All my closest working comrades all dead. Those who survived the Post-Atomic Horror bent on making sure the Optimum would never rise again." A sigh. "Not that I blame them, of course." She then raised her hand to gaze on her palm. "And I was just a husk of a man, T'Neri. Non-optimal. And I was on the run, forced to keep myself hidden to ensure I didn't face a court of law for my crimes against the people of Britain."

"You desired retribution."

"Yes. And I pressed myself until the flesh of my original body began to fully fail after the turn of the century . . . and then I heard of the Grigari. And thanks to Wirk'li, I was allowed to learn what being truly optimal was." Adrienne smirked. "With automatic gender reassignment thrown in free of charge." As T'Neri fought back the urge to grin, the reborn light infantry colonel from Bristol said, "And now I've just learned that while I was evolving my ideas and beliefs, all who I had once called 'comrades' were on another world. Unchanging. Not willing to evolve. And cloning themselves again and again and again, allowing their minds to disintegrate more every time they switched from body to body."

"Are you upset they abandoned you?"

"No," Adrienne stated before slurping up more of her ice cream. "Their beliefs forbade their accepting anyone that was wounded. I had lost an eye, both arms and both legs, T'Neri. In their eyes, I was not optimal. So I had to be deleted."

"Will John be deleted?" the young Vulcan asked.

"No," the Questor stated. "His fate will be decided soon."

T'Neri nodded . . .

* * *

San Francisco, Starfleet Command Headquarters, two days later . . .

"Icaria?"

"Yes," Shyrae stated. Adrienne Thorsen was currently dressed in the uniform of a Marine lieutenant-colonel, the insignia of her regiment - which existed today as the 11th Infantry Battalion (The Rifles of England) of the Starfleet Marine Corps - over her cloth nametag. That read **A.Z. THORSEN**; she had chosen as her middle name "Zephyr" as a partial salute to the innocent man her other-self had mercilessly hounded for almost three centuries. When she had arrived and had been escorted to the private office of the Director-in-Chief of Section 31 deep within the headquarters complex at the site of the Presidio of San Francisco, no one bothered to look twice at the woman in the black-and-forest green uniform. Then again, Adrienne realised, the family name "Thorsen" was a common name for those of Swedish and Norwegian descent; Adrik Thorsen himself had been part-Swedish and part-Russian, descent from nobles from western Russia who had fled to Britain in the wake of the 1917 October Revolution. "It seems that when the Icarian Movement used Roy's fighters as a cover to make their final escape from Earth, Green and his friends snuck aboard their ships and went with them. What better way to make sure they would never be hunted down, then brought finally to the bar of justice for their actions against the people of Earth . . . and, at the same time, try to develop their 'optimal' society. The Icarians under Green's sister . . . "

"Had similar ideas," Adrienne finished for the fleet admiral, and then she blinked as something came to her. "The Phaëtons all arose from that same migration. Why did they develop so differently?"

"Because they had no choice when they started giving birth to children with psionic powers," Shyrae answered for the other woman. "While we don't know this in any sort of factual way, if there were any supporters of Green on that planet, they would have been either exposed by a mind-probe or - because the colony was turning out so good thanks to the abundant natural resources - they decided it wasn't worth espousing something that people didn't want anything more to do with, then got on with their lives." The Andorian-form Questor sighed. "But if Green - whom we have confirmed is alive and well on Icaria - and his friends are all still dreaming of conquest . . . "

"They'll come back," Adrienne stated. "And that's something the Federation can't afford at this time, especially with the Dominion and the Borg out there."

"How much do you know about them?"

A smirk. "They're not optimal like us, Admiral. One race is cybernetic and exists in a group hive-mind. What's happening to those Grigari who haven't Crossed into the Fold proves how stupid that is in the long run. The other is controlled by a race of paranoid shape-shifters that don't realise that 'solids' compose nearly ninety-five percent of the sentient species of the galaxy. And there are powers out there who would not be the least bit impressed by their boasting of having ruled their part of Gamma Quadrant for ten millennia. Can't claim that if you use a sun-killer bomb to make their home star go nova, much less anti-matter bombs to burn away their 'great link.'"

Shyrae gazed curiously at her. "How do you define 'optimal?'"

The former leader of the Optimum Movement in Great Britain shrugged. "You strive to improve yourself, both physically and mentally. You find challenges and overcome them. You learn of new things and understand them. The Borg, the Founders, the Grigari . . . " A shake of the head. "They don't do that, Admiral."

Shyrae smiled. "It took you long enough to learn that, Colonel. But believe me, I will be watching you closely. And when Roy is restored to full function again, I will personally assign her to keep a leash on you. Count on it."

Adrienne hummed. "Well, when we were sleeping together in hotel rooms after the Patricias came to London to do the Changing of the Guard for the dodranscentennial anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Kap'yŏng in 2026, she never seemed to care for any sort of S&M." As the admiral gaped at her, the colonel moved to leave. "I doubt after three centuries living with Vulcans, that would have improved. Anyhow, I have my studies to return to, plus the information about the Grigari parthenogenesis techniques to pass on to those who might be interested in them. Excuse me, Admiral."

With a nod of her head, she walked out of the office. After the door had closed, Shyrae sat at her desk. "Roy, are you going to be like _**that**_ when Carol comes back with that meson crystal Gary Seven got for her?" she wondered aloud . . .

* * *

Cold Lake, Alberta, that evening . . .

"This is one beautiful ship you've got here, Colonel. You actually own it?"

"I got it quite cheaply from a Ferengi shipwright who takes great pride in her personal work. And I made sure she saw the profit in the trade."

The propulsion engineer technician third class assigned to the fleet support element of Marine Base Wainwright - which was home to the 1st Brigade of the First Marine Division and its combat units, the 14th Infantry Battalion (Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry), the 60th Infantry Battalion (Queen's Own Rifles of Canada), and the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion (Lord Strathcona's Horse) - based at the site of the former Canadian Forces tactical fighter base whistled. "Damn! From what I heard of Ferengi ships, they're not . . . " She then stopped as she turned to gape at Adrienne. "Wait a minute! The shipwright was a WOMAN? A FERENGI woman?"

"They're not all male chauvinist pigs, Technician Gallagher."

Megan Gallagher blinked, and then she laughed. "Well, we got all the design and system specs downloaded into the main maintenance computer, Colonel. You have any problems with her, the chief will make sure it's taken care of." She then blinked as she gazed on the name that had been painted on the sides of the warp-equipped ship that was more compact than a Danube-class runabout like U.S.S. _Qu'Appelle_ (which was based here as the fleet training support vessel to the 1st Brigade) yet clearly had three times the operational capability. "_Monica_. Who was she, Colonel?"

"A victim of an unfortunate tragedy that shouldn't have happened," Adrienne stated. "Anyhow, I'll be aboard if anyone calls in asking for me."

"Aye, ma'am. Have a good night."

And with that, the crimson-haired Terran-form Questor stepped aboard the _Monica_, closing and securing the door behind her before calling out as she moved to slip off her jacket, "Computer, engage all ship's security protocols and monitoring programs. Place retrothrusters on first standby until ordered otherwise."

The computer chirped back its reply as she then headed to the small kitchen unit to dial up some supper. Once an affirmative beep echoed through the ship, Adrienne then called out, "Computer, open secure hyperspace channel to Master Shipwright Zerha at Baran Spacedock, planet Thalos in the Ferengi Assembly. Secure mode Ten."

"_Channel open. There is an acknowledgement._"

"Visual." Adrienne then gazed at the monitor screen on the forward bulkhead. "A most profitable day to you, sister. How's the weather there?"

"The same given that I live full-time in space. And you're too kind to me, sister. I pray your day has also been profitable," Zerha said as she relaxed in her cabin aboard the spacedock complex she - even if the company was owned by her brother, Barhal - supervised as chief designer and senior systems engineer. "Your gift of a fortnight ago has earned Quark some handsome profits. And I as well as I gave him advice on how to properly market that gift. So how do you like your ship, Adrienne?"

"It's comfortable and it's there for me when I need it," Adrienne stated. "They don't trust me fully - which is understandable, especially after what I heard my other-self did when he was hunting down Zefram Cochrane - but it's starting." She moved to take her seat after pulling her dinner out of the replicator. "What dealings have the Alliance - or any of your sisters in the Fold - had with Icaria?"

Zerha made a face. "Icaria?" she almost spat out. "Why?"

The former infantry colonel explained what she had experienced in Petawawa, plus what had been found out in the interrogation of John Cabal. At the end of it, the Ferengi-form Questor nodded. "So the leaders of the Optimum Movement that you were a part of are still alive - albeit living in cloned bodies - on that planet, eh?" she asked. "Icaria is deep in the heart of Alpha Quadrant; her position in that part of the galaxy is the mirror of Tokzheto's location in Beta Quadrant vis-à-vis Earth. There are wormholes - just like the one that connects Bajor to the Gamma Quadrant - which can shorten the trip to Icaria from this area of space to a matter of hours instead of decades. When my people discovered that, then moved to trade with the Icarians, they were rebuffed at almost every opportunity. We don't care for them."

"Why?"

A snort. "Because they're still a military dictatorship even if they call themselves a 'republic.' Just like I read many parts of Earth were in your time period. What's worse, they pretend that their society is exactly like what their founder - a woman named Phyllis Greene - wanted them to become in the first place." Zerha snorted. "The few Questors who have come from there that I have dealt with say that Phyllis Greene is actually still alive, though in some sort of cryogenetic suspension deep within the heart of their capital city."

"Odd."

"What's wrong?"

"Phyllis Greene is actually the younger sister of my old friend Phillip Green. When she elected to form the Icarian Movement in 2064 after First Contact, she switched from using her first name Eve to her middle name, then she altered the spelling of her last name to make people believe she was not related to him." Adrienne hummed. "If she's still alive, why are they keeping her in suspension? Why not clone her body like they did for Cabal and the rest of those fellows? It does keep them alive . . . "

"They can't clone her, sister."

"Why not?"

"She's actually one of us."

Adrienne gaped. "What?"

"She was given the Gift to Cross into the Fold . . . but it was not properly triggered by whoever gave her that Gift to initiate the Crossing," Zerha explained.

Silence. Adrienne had participated in many Crossings into the Fold when she had lived among the Grigari-form Questors like the woman who had saved her life, Wirk'li. She - like every Questor alive - knew the mechanics of the process, especially when it came to a "self-conversion" case. The "Gift" - an injection of Questor stem cells - was inserted into the blood-stream of the new sister. Once that was done, energy was forced into the new sister's body by she who gave the Gift to commence the internal atomic transformation of the new sister's DNA to Questor norm. The whole thing - depending on the actual body-mass of the new sister - lasted an hour or so.

To actually STOP the process before it was to be fully executed . . .?

"Oh, my God . . . " Adrienne breathed out, and then she sighed. "Could you give me the best and fastest flying route between Earth and Icaria?"

"I'll have it compiled as soon as possible, then transmit it to you," Zerha promised. "But why?"

"Because if this happened at the time I think it happened, Phyllis' current condition may explain what happened to Roy Jameston all those years ago."

The shipwright blinked as she considered that name, and then her eyes widened. "You mean Roy Pannan. The one of us they say endured the Silence?"

"The same," the former infantry colonel replied. "That makes me want to consider a whole new series of questions I'll ask an old friend tomorrow . . . "

* * *

Starfleet Headquarters, the next morning . . .

"So what did you find out about analysing his DNA?"

Commander (Doctor) Katherine Pulaski - whose experience in dealing with the clones of Mariposa years before made her the best person from Starfleet Medical to look into the situation of John Cabal - sighed. "Well, it is as many people have theorised when it came to the leaders of the Optimum Movement over the years," she reported as she relaxed herself in front of Adrienne's work desk in the Intelligence section of the headquarters complex. "He's an augment. And what's worse, the constant cloning of his cells over the decades has degraded his original body's DNA to the point where he can barely keep control over his emotional urges. Like a wild animal now . . . "

A sigh. "Clearly not optimal," Adrienne noted as she gazed on the DNA diagrams the doctor had shown her. "And your scan of my old body's DNA?"

A nod. "You were also an augment, Colonel. A 'second-generation' augment with a normal human parent; your father by the looks of things." Pulaski sat back in her chair as she gave her host a concerned look. "Adrie, didn't you know you were adopted?"

The other woman shook her head. "No. My parents - my adopted parents, I suppose - died sometime after I began officer training at Sandhurst. It was a poor riot in Bristol; things like that were what eventually led to the Welfare Ghettoes that I later helped put down when I was in the Special Air Service." Adrienne shook her head. "So what options do we have for Captain Cabal, Doctor?"

"My personal recommendation?"

"Please."

"Have him Cross into the Fold."

Adrienne gaped. "You're joking."

"I've studied Questor DNA every chance I could, Adrie," Pulaski explained. "Especially if I was in a situation where one of the crew of my unit was a Questor." She held up her hand to physically mark an objection. "Now, I personally don't care to undergo the process myself, but I can see the benefits in doing this, especially in Mister Cabal's case. His DNA is almost on the verge of falling apart; ironically, it's the augmented elements of his genetic code that are effectively keeping him alive now. If he tries to undergo the clone-and-mind shift process again, nothing will survive of his mind in the transition."

The other woman nodded. "Yes. And it would help me find out what happened to Phyllis Greene," she mused. At her guest's look, she added, "My friend from Thalos told me she's still alive, but in cryogenetic suspension on the planet Icaria. And she was STOPPED from fully Crossing into the Fold." As Pulaski gaped in shock at that revelation, Adrienne added, "Since I know Phyllis and Roy were on Station Perfection at the time of Operation: Sundown, I have an idea who might have been the one who could have started that for her."

Pulaski looked horrified. "Oh, my God! Are you saying _**Roy Jameston**_ tried to help the leader of the Icarian Movement become a Questor?" At her host's nod, the doctor then breathed out, "Maybe that has something to do with the memory loss the colonel was reported to have suffered when the Vulcans found her in 2084!"

"And thus, if we're to help Roy regain her memories, we may have to find some way to get Phyllis off Icaria and bring her back to Earth. Or at least to Phaëton," Adrienne noted, and then she stood. "Alright, prepare your report for the fleet admiral, Doctor. I'll have to ask her permission to do this to John. I don't know how Questors here consider a Crossing into the Fold under those circumstances. It's forced, but you said it yourself . . . "

"No choice. Any other approach would require years of medication and DNA-augmentation therapy. And a lot of that sort of augmentation therapy - if it is not illegal - IS seen as quite immoral."

The colonel nodded . . .

* * *

Two hours later . . .

"John . . . "

A raspy moan escaped the young woman lying on the diagnostic bed.

"Captain Cabal! Get up!"

Said woman bolted up. "I'm awake!" she cried out. "I'm awake . . .!"

Her voice then trailed off as she noted where she was. Quickly spotting the two scowling marines in battle dress, phaser rifles in their arms and at the ready, she then blinked before she looked down at her body, which was draped in a simple sheet.

Her body . . .

Her . . .

A horrified scream then echoed throughout much of Starfleet Command . . .

_**The End . . . For Now!**_

* * *

_**SIDE STORY NOTES:**__ This story is set just before the main story. It concentrates on a Questor "daughter" (though she pretty much sees herself as the same person all along) of Colonel Adrik Thorsen, the villain of Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens' 1994 _Star Trek_ novel _Federation_. As stated in the writer's notes of _Avalonians and Questors_ when I mentioned my referring to the Reeves-Stevens' work as part of the background history of the Federation universe, what was depicted in _Federation_ (which came out two years before the movie _First Contact_) will be considered factual in the storyline of this series save for when the novel's information contradicts what was shown in the movie._

_T'Neri and her parents, of course, appeared in Part 16 of _Avalonians and Questors_._


End file.
